


Paved with Good Intentions

by lilsmartass



Series: First Impressions and Second Chances [2]
Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt Tony, Hurt/Comfort, Protective Steve, Steve POV, even Steve Rogers isn't perfect, happy ending I promise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-14
Updated: 2013-01-16
Packaged: 2017-11-21 03:30:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 36,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/592942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilsmartass/pseuds/lilsmartass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary: Stark is arrogant, offensive, insensitive and everything Steve Rogers hates about the twenty first century, but not everything is as it seems. Companion piece to Iron Man Yes, Tony Stark…Not Recommended and runs simultaneously with those events.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Rating: PG-13  
> Disclaimer: Not mine unfortunately, though considering what I put them through, probably for the best.  
> Warning/Spoilers: ANGST, emotional Tony hurt, feels, unintentional bullying, misconceptions  
> Genre: angst, hurt/comfort, gen

** Paved with Good Intentions **

**Prologue**

“It was good of you to come Captain.” She settles into a chair and looks up at him where he is standing at parade rest on the far side of the room.

Steve gives a short nod. He’s only met Maria Hill once, and he’s not there out of the goodness of his heart. Orders are orders, even after all these years. Colonel Philips would have been able to tell Fury that he had never been all that good at following them, had always done what he believed was right instead, but now they soothe him somewhat, something familiar to cling to in a world so new it might as well be a different planet. There is very little else here that he knows, but military expectations change very little.

She seems happy to accept what he knows is a bordering on insubordinate silence, and spreads a few folders on the table in front of him. “The creature known as Loki is far stronger than anyone, anything else, you’ve ever encountered Captain,” she states in a clear, uncompromising tone.

He doesn’t argue, he appreciates her crisp work ethic and manner, simply nods again. He doesn’t doubt that she knows his past missions as well as he does. He’s a legend now, so they tell him.

Realising that he is not going to start defending an inflated ego, or macho pride, a hint of a smile lightens her face and she carries on, “By our estimates creatures from his world are approximately eight times stronger than human norm. That makes him five times stronger than you. I’ve put together the files of the people we’ll send with you to apprehend him.”

Steve feels a sinking sensation in his stomach as he looks at the folders. He feels as though the very air of the room is crushing in on him. More people depending on him, more lives in his hands. He settles himself in the chair on the other side of her desk, steels himself, and flicks open the first folder.

“Natasha Romanov,” Maria Hill states, fingernail tapping the profile picture at the top of the page, “One of our best Agents. She’ll be your liaison with us, not in a formal way you understand, but she knows our habits, knows our protocols. She’s an incredible fighter too,” she eyes him beadily, perhaps expecting him to object to a woman in combat.

Steve does not touch the picture, though his fingers twitch slightly in his lap. He can see Peggy in the glint of this woman’s eyes, the curl of her hair. “I don’t doubt it,” he says, skimming over the information, assassin, spy, master in several disciplines of hand to hand combat. She’ll be an asset in anything he has to do to apprehend this creature requiring stealth, and she’s probably used to thinking on her feet, an asset in any situation. He pulls the folder closer for more in depth perusal later. “Next.”

She taps another folder, “Bruce Banner, but it would be better for you to see the footage we have of him to really understand. She flips another folder open so he briefly catches a glimpse of another photo, “Barton. He’s our compromised man. If at all possible, bring him in alive.” She stacks that folder on top of Banner’s. “And finally,” he takes the final folder, opening this one himself.

Inside is a picture he’s already seen, Howard’s boy. Anthony. He feels his heart stutter in his chest and has to look away from the strong features and Howard’s dark eyes in a different face. He cannot curl into a ball and whimper and cry because he’s lost everyone he has ever known, everything that has ever mattered to him. He’s Captain America, that is all that has survived of Steve Rogers, all these people know him as, and Captain America doesn’t give into such weaknesses. And besides, it would be the height of selfishness. He’s not the only one to lose everything, not the only one to be alone. Bucky had been an orphan, Peggy had lost her parents and both her little sisters in the Blitz and had been the last one of them, outliving all her boys, no one left who knew what they’d done and faced. But still, he can hardly bear to look at the face of Howard’s boy, tantalisingly almost-familiar, a mockery of what he truly wants. “I’ve read it.”  

“This is the full version. Stark can’t hack into this to change it.”

“Hack?” he asks, in the weary way he has adopted when questioning new, unfamiliar words.

“It means to use a computer to break into someone else’s computer.”

“And he can-? Is that legal?”

“No.” She shuffles some papers briskly together, “No it is not, but Stark is...” she hesitates, bites her lip and looks away.”

“Ma’am? Stark is..?”

“I don’t want to...I know Howard was your friend.”

Steve keeps his tone absolutely level, “He is not Howard.”

She nods once, the same economy of motion in her gesture that had been in his earlier, “Very well Captain. Stark is brilliant, a technological genius. He can build things you can’t imagine, that _we_ can’t imagine. He can do anything you can think of and then some with a computer. If it exists digitally – that means on computer – if Stark wants to read it, he can. But outside of his sheer brains he’s arrogant and spoiled. He takes a childish delight in being deliberately difficult and antagonistic. He can charm anyone he wants, and uses it as a weapon, seduces women and leaves them disgarded in his wake. He’s nothing but a little boy playing at hero, and, quite frankly, I wish you didn’t have to work with him. You’re our greatest asset and he’s a...” she flounders.

“A bad influence,” Steve suggests with a small smile.

“Well...yes.”

“I’ll be fine. I won’t be led astray,” he’s half joking.

“I know. You’re...well...you. Just don’t...don’t let his light dazzle you from the darkness underneath.”

Steve isn’t precisely sure what she means by the words or the ominous tone so he just nods. He’ll bear in mind what she’s told him, but he makes his own decisions.

*  
He is prepared for a lot of things but for Stark to be so outright callous about his time under the ice, so unwilling to hang back even for a few seconds until he has a better plan than throw himself into battle against a creature strong enough to twist him into a pretzel even inside his metal contraption, that he is not prepared for.

He wouldn’t have said half the things he did if not for the influence of Loki’s septre, but it is undeniable that he was thinking them. He doesn’t doubt that Stark means the vicious words that fall from his own lips either. And after...after...for a brief, shining moment, he is impressed, is willing to make amends because Stark is willing to throw himself on the wire after all, but then he hears him bragging to a pretty girl in a SHIELD jumpsuit with a rubble streaked face, about how his armour could survive anything and realises that brave it might have been, but flying the nuke through the portal had hardly been the self-sacrifical action he thought it was. Stark had known he’d survive the whole time, once again, just cutting the wire. He’s glad Stark’s alive, of course he is, but it’s somewhat disappointing to be proven right about the man.

Later, when Stark has returned to what is left of his decimated tower and he, Barton and Natasha to the SHIELD barracks he steels himself to bring it up, to ask neutral questions about what they think of the people Fury plans to make their team. They have glowing words of recommendation for one another, obviously long term partners, possibly more if Steve is interpreting the regular touches of reassurance correctly. Barton is openly awed by Thor’s strength and endurance in battle. Natasha speaks hesitantly but surely of how both Banner and the Hulk are assets in their own way. They both assure him that they are willing to continue to follow his commands.

Then there is silence. An awkward, uncomfortable silence, that means too much. “And Stark?”

“An advantage in battle,” Natasha says, lapsing back into silence for a moment before adding. “Outside of the suit he’s a bit...”

“Yes.” Steve agrees.

“I did his original assessment for the Avengers. He’s not...his heart’s in the right place, mostly, if he’s not deliberately needling. And he’s charming, if someone who pokes every raw spot he can find to see if you twitch is the kind of man you find charming, but he’s not...he wouldn’t pass a psychological profile. He’s too erratic, and too self-absorbed.”

“And a sex predator,” Barton grumbles under his breath.

Natasha’s fingers tighten sharply over his wrist, “And he’ll flirt with everything that moves and some things that don’t. He’d never force anyone...but I don’t think he gets that many rejections.”

Steve doesn’t like the discomfort that puts into his stomach. He doesn’t like the thought Stark trying to coerce Natasha into bed, coerce anyone into bed, with promises of the world and no honourable intentions. He’d been on tour with USO girls for months, but he’d never have even dreamed of asking that of them, of ruining them in that manner. And he knows it’s different now, he’s had it explained to him, but it’s...disrespectful. “What does his wife say?”

“Pepper Potts? She’s not his wife. He used to be his PA, his assistant. She runs his company for him now and they’re...she’s his girlfriend.”

“And he’s faithful?” It’s a personal question, but Steve won’t have a man incapable of personal loyalty on his team. He just won’t, fighting alongside one another as they have done today, is too great a risk when you cannot trust each other.

“So far as I know. I can’t imagine that Pepper would stand for anything else. And she’d know, she’s known him for a long time, he’d never be able to hide it from her.”

Steve gives a soft noise of assent. “But your initial assessment still said that he was personally and psychologically unsuitable for the Avengers?”

“He wasn’t dating her back then, she might be the making of him,” Natasha defends, smothering a yawn.

Barton snorts through his nose, “Come on Cap, he’s a delicate billionaire, what does he know about hard work and discipline and struggle? Do you really think he’ll be able to hack this on a regular basis? When it’s not a novelty, and not exciting and not _fun_?”

Natasha tips her head slightly. “Maybe. At the moment he’s not a full Avenger anyway, he’s just a consultant. We can call him in when we need him, he’s welcome to help us out if he wants, but he’s under no obligation and we won’t rely on him and see how it works out until we get a better handle on how he reacts to stress like this long term.”

It’s a sound analysis, and Steve has no doubt that Natasha is the best people person of the three of them, the one best able to read others, and certainly the one who knows Stark the best. “Will it cause a problem to change Director Fury’s agreed line-up?”

“Shouldn’t. Stark was already told we’d like to use him as a consultant but that he was unsuitable to be an Avenger full time.”

Steve nods again. His mind is beginning to drift away from this conversation, he’s longing for nothing more than a shower and then bed. At the door to Natasha’s room he bids her a soft goodnight and continues down the dusty, silent hallway in step with Barton. “Night Hawkeye,” he yawns when he reaches his own door.

Barton gives a lopsided smirk that creases his face and doesn’t reach his eyes, “We’re team mates Cap. Call me Clint.”     


	2. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summary: Stark is arrogant, offensive, insensitive and everything Steve Rogers hates about the twenty first century, but not everything is as it seems. Companion piece to Iron Man Yes, Tony Stark…Not Recommended and runs simultaneously with those events.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating: PG-13  
> Disclaimer: Not mine unfortunately, though considering what I put them through, probably for the best.  
> Warning/Spoilers: ANGST, emotional Tony hurt, feels, unintentional bullying, misconceptions  
> Genre: angst, hurt/comfort, gen

**Paved with Good Intentions**

 

Steve, Clint and Natasha spend the next week in some hybrid state between leave and active duty. They’re not really supposed to leave the base without checking out and notifying the guard house when they’ll be back. There are debriefings to get done, plans to be made, they, alongside Stark (who is spending the time doing god alone knows what with his tower and refusing to take SHIELD’s calls) and Banner (who has stated categorically that he expects Fury to keep his promise and let him leave now the threat has been neutralised) see Thor take Loki back to Asgard. Steve gets a vindictive satisfaction that he’s very uncomfortable with seeing the so-called god in chains. He puts it down to the brief expression he saw in Clint’s eyes before he slid the sunglasses on.

Other than those few restrictions though, they are free to do as they please. Weirdly, more comfortable in this decade now he’s living on base and fresh from a war once again, Steve spends the days exploring this new New York on his bike or hanging out with Clint and Natasha in one of their private quarters. They don’t really go to the communal areas of the barracks. For Steve’s part it is because he hates meeting his adoring fans. He’s not worthy of their adulation. In the eyes of ever one of them he sees Agent Coulson.

He’s not sure what keeps Clint and Natasha confined to these rooms. For consummate spies, it is all too easy to tell how desperately restless they are, but Steve doesn’t push it, doesn’t even mention it.

One day he’s on his way back to his room after a few hours of make-work from Fury. He probably doesn’t have to do it, but he’s here, he may as well be useful, when he sees a group of younger, junior agents, pushing Clint about in the centre of the group. It’s eerily reminiscent of too many memories of his childhood and pre-serum years, but for one thing, Clint’s head is down, shoulders hunched, and Steve knows his fighting capabilities. He is choosing not to fight to fight back, he’s _letting_ them do this. He only has to take a few steps forward before his serum improved hearing can pick up what they’re hissing at him, “Traitor, got your own handler killed.”

Steve sees red, he detests bullies. Can these people not see what their words are doing to Clint? Do they not think that if he was a danger he wouldn’t be wandering freely about a highly secret base? He was as much a victim as any of them, more, because he has to live with this. Steve can’t even imagine the horror of having your body and mind stolen from you, forced to turn on the ones you love, to work to take down everything you believe in. He can think of nothing worse.

They’re so distracted with Clint that he is able to get close before they see him. They straighten, backing away uncertainly. “Agents,” Steve says, voice stern, but steady, “I’m sure my opinion of bullies is a matter of public record.”

It’s not a question, but there’s a ragged chorus of “Yes sirs,” anyway.

“Good. I don’t expect to see any of you, or your friends, involved in this kind of incident ever again. If that is the case, I might manage to forget that I saw you here.” His eyes sweep over each face, making it clear that he is memorising them.

Whatever their flaws, they are agents of SHIELD so they do not turn and flee, but it’s a close thing. Steve doesn’t stop the rapid leaving, doesn’t ask if they have anything they’d perhaps like to say to Agent Barton. He can see the look on Clint’s face and is unsurprised when the last has gone and Clint whirls on him snarling, “I don’t need you to fight my battles for me Captain.”

Steve remains impassive. “No, you could easily have taken out those idiots yourself. I know that.”

“Then _why_?” his voice cracks.

“You do not deserve that Clint. You were taking it like you think it is your due, but it’s not.”

Clint looks away, throat working, “Tell that to Coulson.”

“A very wise lady once told me, that soldiers make their choices and know the dangers and risks of what they do, to try and take responsibility for their deaths...is to demean the sacrifice.” There is only stubborn silence, and Steve sighs softly, “You were not at fault Clint. No more than any other POW. We’re only human; none of us can be expected to resist magic.”

“Monsters and magic and nothing we were ever trained for,” Clint says, sounding half hysterical and with an intonation that tells Steve he is quoting someone.

He sees a single glistening tear slide down Clint’s cheek and moves slightly, fidgeting on his feet, not out of discomfort or embarrassment, merely to ensure that Clint cannot be seen by anyone else who enters the passageway. He wouldn’t want to expose a weakness so blatantly. “Come on,” he says easily, “We need to get back. Natasha will think we’ve abandoned her for sports and beer.”

“I would invite Nat to sports and beer. She’ll think I’m on the range against orders. Again.”

His voice is a passable impersonation of his usual cavalier tone and, though Steve’s eyes pass over the raw bruise on his forearm which can only have been made by a bowstring which tells him that Clint was indeed on the range in the past few hours, he says nothing.

Natasha has been to the mess and brought back enough food for three, something Steve is almost certain she isn’t allowed to do. Her sharp gaze notices immediately that something is wrong, but she says nothing, merely plies them both with food. It’s not great, but Steve has eaten far worse. It’s unexpected when Clint swallows an almost defiantly large bite and says to Steve’s knee, “I’m not cleared to be an Avenger, further profiling need to make sure Loki didn’t leave anything unexpected in my brain. Sorry.”

Steve doesn’t tell him not to apologise. He knows what it is to be declared unfit; to be in a body that no one believes can do what your soul yearns to do. Telling him not to apologise won’t help. He smiles his best, beaming, selling war bonds smile, “I’m sure I can fix that.”

Clint looks sceptical. “How? You’re not a doctor or a psychiatrist.”

“Clint, I spend every waking moment with you. If Loki had left anything, I’d be a logical target to take out and you’ve had ample opportunity. Natasha’s the same, taking her out, at your own hand, would destroy you,” Clint flinches but Steve barrels on, “and Loki has every reason to want revenge on her. And yet, she’s still fine. I very much there’s anything still lurking. And what’s the point in being a back from the dead, world saving, national icon if I can’t get who I want for my team?”

Clint looks at him, half amused, half appalled, mostly surprised. “But...you can’t...not for me Steve.”

Steve is not in the habit of making sappy declarations so he doesn’t say what he’s thinking and instead goes back to his drink, calmly saying. “I want the best on my team Hawkeye; I think the greatest marksman in the world qualifies don’t you?”

*

It’s inevitable that the press find out where they are. Steve is still not used to how invasive the papers are in this time, and doesn’t know how to deal with it. He spends time with Clint and Natasha because they know what happened, know what they each saw, and were equally shaken. Better, they are quiet, and understand that they must sometimes leave him alone and don’t push. He doesn’t remember the ice, not really, and he thanks God for that mercy even as he’s not yet sure if it was a blessing or a curse that he was pulled from it, but he craves solitude sometimes after so long alone. Natasha and Clint understand that, even as they refuse to allow him to grow too withdrawn and unfailingly appear when the solitude becomes oppressive, or the slightly too-cold air enough to remind him of the little he does remember.

The invasion of the reporters should be enough to keep him firmly grounded in this new world since it is a phenomena which comes from this time and has little bearing on his own, but it seems that everywhere he turns Stark’s face is plastered across something as he talks about the Avengers and his plans for rebuilding Manhattan. It irritates Steve unaccountably, and he can’t help but think that a man who deliberately craved and sought such fame and attention, must be arrogant and self-confidant to the point of recklessness. For himself, nothing was more humiliating than being paraded as a dancing monkey and inciting other young men to join the war effort while being prevented from fighting himself.

Steve has never run from a fight, never hidden from an enemy, such cowardice isn’t in him, but he hides from the reporters, consoling himself with the knowledge that Clint and Natasha are doing the same, and they are neither of them cowards. Clint in particular hates the scrutiny. His sunglasses are almost ever present, and his always taciturn nature is downright vicious when he feels someone is asking too-probing questions or overstepping the very clear boundaries he lays down. Natasha is worried about him, Steve can tell. Though they don’t yet know each other well enough for her to confide in him, he knows what the ones left behind worrying about their men fighting a war they can’t see, can’t imagine, look like. He still doesn’t know if they are friends or if they are more, neither wears a wedding band, and he knows such things are less important now but he knows no other significant tell to look for, but even if they are mere friends and allies and siblings in arms, he knows he wore that same look for Bucky, when his best friend went off without him and he had been rejected yet again. In the end though, even hiding doesn’t work forever.

“Stark is the face of the Avengers,” Fury barks at them one morning, glaring at the three of them lined in front of his desk like schoolchildren hauled in before the headmaster, “and that’s the kind of problem we need to nip in the bud.”

“Sir,” Natasha tries, soft but steely, “Stark has more practice than any of us with dealing with the media, and Ms. Potts is better than any other PR person I know, and I don’t think any of us can match them.”

“You misunderstand me Agent, Stark is doing an _excellent_ job, but if he is the only Avenger the public feels they know, they only one that has spoken to them. It will not be Stark, but the whole initiative that is caught up in his next scandal.”

Steve represses a sigh, “Scandal?”

It’s Natasha who answers, “Booze, women, general decadence, public indecency, you name it Stark’s done it. That’s one of the main reasons why he’s being retained as a consultant pending further decisions about his future with the Avengers even though Iron Man is such an asset.”

This sigh Steve doesn’t repress, but it is his job to be the dutiful soldier, it is what these people want of him. “What did you want us to do sir?”

Fury wants them to get into their Avengers regalia and go out on the streets clearing rubble. It’s yet more make work, though it is more strenuous than the paperwork kind. They are designated an area of rubble to move and help with, they are asked to move specific pieces and hold them, posing for photographs and it’s clearly safe because members of the public come right up to them demanding autographs and pictures of their own on their own handheld devices. It’s not so bad when it’s children, or people who only want to say thank you, but Steve comes close a few times to unleashing his strength and pent up rage on some of the men who speak to Natasha and some of the women are forward enough to make the blond who had accosted him outside Howard’s lab decades ago seem downright demure. It sets Steve’s teeth on edge that those are the ones that Stark seems to actively enjoy speaking to.

They had been out before, in the immediate aftermath, helping with the genuine emergency rescues, but the real clean up, making the roads passable and the buildings safe once again, had fallen largely to other people. Steve feels guilty about putting his own need for rest and silence and space above helping restore what he had been instrumental in breaking. Stark complains the whole time, through a blindingly white, paparazzi ready smile, that this is a waste of his time and effort, and that they should be above this. They stopped the monsters, they got the people in mortal danger under the wreckage out, and they should now get to take a day.

When they get back to the barracks, they are weary and heartsick. Stark is still complaining, apparently unconcerned with keeping a conversation that no one is even pretending to listen to running by himself. Steve tunes out the meaningless chatter, too tired for the verbal assault Stark will launch if he attempts to quiet him. Beside him, he can feel Clint bristling and he resolves to step in if he thinks the archer may do something he will regret later but not until then. They are still smeared with dust and sweat when they settle in the conference room, Stark leaning against the wall because the chairs in here won’t handle the weight of his suit.

The debriefing is short and easy. This was a publicity stunt, there’s nothing really to talk about. “Stark,” Fury says abruptly, just as they’re preparing to leave, just as Steve thinks he might be able to go and wreck some punching bags until he forgets all about this horrible day. “You’ve got space at that tower of yours? You,” his gaze clearly includes him and Clint and Natasha, “can all stay there then. I’m sick of the media camped out around my supposedly top secret base trying to snap a picture of Captain America in his long johns.”

Clint’s hackles come up so clearly Steve is half surprised his body hasn’t swelled like an angry cat, but Steve can tell from Fury’s glare that this matter is not up for debate. He probably hates the media outside his secret barracks more than Steve hates them being there, and Clint does not need to get shot down over this, not after this day and too many people pressing too close. He flushes lightly at the taken aback, and clearly unwilling, look on Stark’s face, but says, “Yes sir,” quickly. Fury, master spy or otherwise, probably can’t offer rooms in a building Stark owns, but if Stark takes such strong exception let him argue the case. He’s much better emotionally equipped to deal with a row with Fury than Clint is.

With much better grace than Steve expects, Stark sighs, “Give me a week to get some rooms ready.” He runs his hand over his face and hair, clearly calculating how much trouble this is going to be.

“Three days,” Fury barks.

That garners the childish reaction Steve had expected and Stark sticks his tongue out at Fury when the Director turns his back. It’s on the tip of his tongue to condemn the man for his rudeness, but Stark had been more charitable about the rooms than Steve had any right to expect, even if the thought of being beholden to Stark for anything does crawl under his skin, he’s never needed hand outs from anybody, even skinny and weak and asthmatic he’d somehow managed to keep food on the table and a roof over his and his mother’s head. Besides, Fury might have had the decency to make such a request privately. He says nothing and leaves when they are dismissed.


	3. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summary: Stark is arrogant, offensive, insensitive and everything Steve Rogers hates about the twenty first century, but not everything is as it seems. Companion piece to Iron Man Yes, Tony Stark…Not Recommended and runs simultaneously with those events.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating: PG-13  
> Disclaimer: Not mine unfortunately, though considering what I put them through, probably for the best.  
> Warning/Spoilers: ANGST, emotional Tony hurt, feels, unintentional bullying, misconceptions  
> Genre: angst, hurt/comfort, gen  
> A/N: I have (finally!) finished the first draft of this, and it will be 10 chapters (I know, the numebr keeps changing, but I'm sure now) and almost 37000 words as it covers all the main points from Iron Man Yes and has additional Steve, Clint, Natasha dialogue.

**Paved with Good Intentions**

 

Stark showing them where they are now to live is exhausting to say the least, but Steve is grateful the man never stops talking. It saves him the trouble of forcing himself to be polite, when, right from the start Stark takes pleasure in being deliberately unpleasant. From the moment they arrive he is leery about the little they own, enjoying rubbing his extravagant wealth in their faces, and he probes to know about Clint and Natasha, asking the questions that yes, Steve wants an answer to, but would never dream of enquiring, certainly not in front of an audience. He gathers from Clint’s reaction that the number of his floor is a sexual reference, but knows nothing more than that, so chooses to ignore it.

And that’s another thing, the floors Stark has given then, each planned perfectly and tailored for them individually in a way that makes Steve feel extremely uncomfortable, creepy is what Clint calls it when they are sitting at a small cafe later. Steve can’t deny he finds it disquieting to be the object of so much thought, and more wealth than he has ever before imagined, from a man he has met only once. He tells himself sternly not to be ungrateful, that Howard too had been almost ludicrously generous, money so little an object to him that he was like a child in wasting it, but the thought burns. He doesn’t want to liken Tony to his father because he is not his father, he can never _be_ his father and that thought burns too. Besides, the Howard he had known would never have tolerated people he barely knew in his space, even if it was an eighty storey high tower, and Tony’s obvious excitement about having them there has set off all of Steve’s internal alarms. Tony obviously wants something back from them. There is only one thing he can think of, one thing that would have been worth going to all this trouble for a man of science. Tony must want his blood, his genetics to study.

It’s not even like he would say no. He’s nobody’s science project, but he understands that the benefits of replicating the serum, even in part. The benefits of being able to reliably reproduce his healing factor would be incalculable. At the very least it would prevent such catastrophic failures as Doctor Banner’s accident. But he finds the way Stark is clearly trying to buddy up to him before asking unsettling. It suggests more invasive procedures than blood samples, and it suggests the kind of deviousness of mind Steve has always found distasteful at best. He can’t help but be reminded that the politicians who used him to recruit more boys for the front lines, to rake in more money for the war effort, had been all wide toothy smiles but had referred to him sometimes as ‘it’ behind his back, as though he wasn’t – quite – human, and he wasn’t quite was he? He wouldn’t have heard them at all if not for the benefit of his serum enhanced hearing. They’d been quick to give him every material thing he wanted too. Like them too, Stark never says what he means, otherwise he’d have told Steve more than that he had somewhere to put the nuke, told him that he had a plan to come back, instead of allowing Steve to almost accidentally cause another death. It still gives him cold sweats in the night that he could have killed yet another person who trusted him. It was bad enough having to watch Howard’s boy fall, just as Bucky had done, without the realisation that he had caused this fall too.

Still, like with those politicians all those decades ago, he has quiet self confidence in the knowledge that he cannot be bought or bribed, he’s never been much interested in possessions and that hasn’t changed despite what Stark is offering. Far worse is the computer intelligence in the walls, relaying constant medical information from his rooms and complete visual and audio footage from everywhere not private quarters. Steve has always hated being watched, it comes of having spent his youth being hunted by packs of bullies.

It’s not even the most intrusive security procedure seemingly common in this time, but the fact that Stark didn’t ask...well, he doesn’t have to. It’s his tower, they are there under orders, and it’s as subtle a piece of power play as Steve has ever seen. Not _quite_ unsettling enough to be true intimidation, but enough that they are under no delusions that, within these walls, Stark holds all the power and control; just enough that they can never, truly, relax, always under scrutiny by a man they don’t trust.

Stark invites them for food afterwards, but it’s taken the combined efforts of him and Natasha, hemming Clint in so he has no space to launch himself physically at Tony, quieting him with gentle touches over the billionaire’s more insensitive remarks, to hold the archer back. He hates feeling overpowered, ever since Loki. Orders from SHIELD he can handle, because he has chosen to follow that organisation, chosen to ally himself with their wants and needs, and to trust even when he does not know which wants and needs he is serving. Natasha tells him that the senior agents he works the most closely with have earned that trust personally, that they are all friends and have fought and worked together for years. It is no wonder he’s taking the loss of Agent Coulson so hard. Steve declines Stark’s offer, needing to get Clint out of there, needing to check him over and make sure that he’s holding it, at least somewhat, together, not force him to endure two hours of small talk and the necessity of being polite to their host. He mutters some excuse that he hopes is appropriate and he and Natasha usher Clint out ahead of them, bumping shoulders companionably to remind him that they are still there, joking amongst themselves like children released from a classroom now that they’ve fulfilled their ordered task for the day and are off duty once more. In his periphery, as he half turns to allow Natasha through the door before him, Steve is relieved to note Stark shrug and head into his workshop, obviously not offended.

They go for lunch at a small cafe. Surprisingly, it is Natasha who seems the least worried about living at Stark tower. She points out dryly that having staff at your beck and call, your clothing simply turning up clean and pressed within hours of being dropped down the laundry chute, anything you could possibly ever wish to eat in any conceivable quantity and ridiculously comfortable beds is not all bad. She laughingly tells stories of her time under cover as Natalie, and though Steve finds the mentions of Stark’s attempt to seduce her slightly inappropriate, and finds himself wondering if such aggressive tactics are how Ms. Potts ended up in his bed, he knows Natasha can take care of herself. She’s an entertaining speaker when she wants to be and he finds himself laughing along with her.

The next day Steve receives an email from Stark, wondering if the team want to come and spend some time with him in his private bar. Steve blinks at the term private bar, and goes to find Clint, wondering if the man can possibly be serious. Clint suspects that, about this at least, Stark is deadly serious. “He’s a borderline alcoholic,” he says, mouth twisting wryly.

Steve scowls at that. He knows far too much about men who drank money their wives and families desperately needed, and Stark can afford a kind of excess that was all but unheard of in his time.

“He bought a bar some General tried to throw him out of once.”

“What?”

Clint chuckles lightly and only the tightening of the skin around his eyes betrays his emotion as he says, “Yeah, Phil sent him to piss off General Ross to get Fury out having to do something by getting Ross to refuse. Stark performed admirably.”

Steve can’t help a smile of his own, “I bet he did. So he bought the bar?”

“Had it bulldozed I heard.”

Steve doesn’t really approve of acting that way towards Generals, but he knows that this General Ross has some connection to Banner and is the reason the doctor is so wary of any and all military organisations. He doesn’t really blame him, the brass had sometimes treated him like a specimen and he had the advantage of being America’s golden boy, not turning into an uncontrollable monster that racked up a pretty substantial body count. But still...Stark’s behaviour hadn’t been done in defence of anyone; it had likely just been gratifying his own ego because Ross had refused to pander to him. Stark had proven on the helicarrier that he behaved at his most childish when not the centre of attention in any given room. He smiles anyway, “So do you want to go to Stark’s thing?”

Clint shakes his head. “I don’t- My dad was a drunk.” He averts his eyes, like Steve will judge him for another’s failings. “I’m not...I don’t like people getting drunk around me, and Stark doesn’t have the best reputation.” He smiles again, but it’s more shadowed now, “You should if you want though. Stark’s bashes are supposed to be fun. He’s mostly a let’s-do-something-wacky-wild-and-expensive drunk than a violent one. Want to see some videos?”

Steve’s not exactly sure what Clint means, but the thought of videos seems to have put some light back into Clint’s eyes and he’ll do anything to keep it there. “Sure,” he agrees.

They spend the rest of the afternoon watching Stark do various deplorable things in internet clips. Steve feels a little like he’s invading the man’s privacy, but Clint quickly points out that it’s in the public domain, it’s not like they’re reading his diary. Besides, Steve rationalises, he does need to know what kind of man he’s trusting his team’s safety to. He still blushes and turns away from the ones that are the most intimate and a blush scalds his skin at the sight of Stark engaging in _activities_ with both men and women, sometimes both at once. He doesn’t dare say anything, afraid of sounding as though he’s judging a lifestyle that may be common now for all he knows. Clint catches his eyes and shrugs, “It’s OK Captain, you don’t have to worry that half the people you know are doing things like this. Stark’s just kind of a slut.”

“There’s not anything wrong with-” Steve begins weakly.

“Of course not,” Clint is quick to agree. He flashes a quick smile, “I’m kind of a slut too. I’m just saying that this is not...no one expects you to start doing this,” he gestures at where Stark is rubbing his own body against a naked man while a lithe blond girl watches in fascination, “like it’s normal now.”

Steve gives a quick nod, more grateful than he cares to acknowledge for the reassurance. “Can we find another video?” he asks, ears burning again as the girl in the video starts moaning wildly, head thrown back while Stark does something clearly obscene and _slurpy_ with his tongue.

Clint smiles and says nothing but obligingly changes to a clip. Steve is relieved to see that Stark is clothed in this one, in a suit and clearly in front of the US senate. That relief quickly fades as Stark starts speaking. It isn’t even that he disagrees with him, he wouldn’t hand his shield over to anyone, regardless of whether or not others thought it was too powerful a weapon to be handled privately, and he wouldn’t expect Thor to hand over his hammer either, but there is no reason for Stark to be so rude, or so crude with it. Of course these people aren’t interested in hearing his arguments when he delights in antagonising them. His mother had always said that good manners cost nothing and achieve much. She would have put him over her knee for speaking to anyone the way Stark is speaking here. It is clear that Stark has never been subjected to any discipline. He was obviously one of those children permitted to do as he wanted, when he wanted. His parents too wrapped up in their own affairs, his father had always been a workaholic, and his nanny’s disinterested in doing the unpleasant parts of child rearing. He briefly pities him for the unfortunate circumstances that have led Stark to this. That pity doesn’t make him any more fond of the man though. “Turn it off,” he sighs. “I’ve seen enough.”

“You going then?” Clint asks, interested, obligingly closing the window on the computer screen they’ve been staring at. “It’ll probably be good fun.”

“I think I’m much too old fashioned for my idea of good fun and Stark’s to have much overlap,” Steve says oppressively.

Clint snorts, “You mean there’re better Friday nights than cavorting naked in Times Square to be had?”

Steve grins, “I could be handing your ass to you in the sparring ring?”

“That sounded like a challenge.”

“To be a challenge there’d have to be some doubt that I would win.”

Clint bounces to his feet in one move. “Alright then. You’re on.”

Steve laughs and follows him out, deciding to reply to Stark’s email later.

Later never comes, the afternoon spent enjoyably sparring with Clint and then Natasha after she insisted on fighting the winner. They both have a considerable amount of skill on him in hand to hand, Steve’s real advantage is that he’s built like a wall and can simply take more than a normal guy. Even so, he has to work hard to beat them, and they always attract a crowd, which makes Steve slightly uncomfortable even as he flushes with pride.

The next time he remembers about the email is when another one arrives in his inbox. This one inviting him to a bar in town that Stark writes has a great pool table and dart board and he can speak to the manager and have it closed for a private function while they grab some food and a few beers and hang out. He turns that one down in polite but impersonal terms. A few days later, there’s a gaudy invitation pinned to his door announcing that a club in town is doing Lady’s Night, cocktails for $2. Stark is bringing Ms. Potts, he has scrawled on the bottom, Clint can bring Natasha and he’ll teach Steve how to dance, Auntie Peggy had once told him he’d never learned. Steve rips the invitation down and scrunches it with an involuntary motion. He’s half jealous that Stark had known Peggy for far longer than he had, had been able to see her while he slept, alone and frozen and half furious that Stark would bring it up, rub it in, even as he acknowledges that that is not how the invitation was meant. He feels tired and so very cold as he heads into his room. He doesn’t want to go, can’t bear to be reminded of being unable to dance and all the memories of Peggy such an evening will unleash, but he does let Clint and Natasha know.

Natasha sighs, “It’s nice that he’s making an effort,” she says.

Clint gives a small smile, “If you drink.” He nods at Steve, “Or if you can get drunk.”

She acknowledges that with a wry tilt of her head, “It would never occur to him that we don’t or can’t.”

“You should go Tash. You’d have a good time.”

She rolls her eyes, “Oh yes, being the third wheel to Stark and Pepper and watching him try to convince her that having a threesome with me is a good idea.”

Steve flushes, “He wouldn’t.”

“He would,” her tone is mostly good natured but there’s a bite to it. “She wouldn’t.”

“I’ll let him know we’re busy.”

Clint glances again at the invitation, “It’s not a lie. We’re out the next morning on that mountain camping thing Fury has planned for us.”

Steve gives a soft smile, “I’m looking forward to that.”

“You are the only one. I hate camping.”

Steve looks shocked, “But- Don’t you want to go. I only chose that because I thought-”

Natasha punches Clint in the shoulder, “You’ve upset Captain America with your pansy American whining.” She turns to Steve, “It’s fine. It’ll be fun. We’ll sing camp fire songs.”

“You’re making fun of me.”

She acknowledges that with a slight softening of her expression, “Only a little.”

He doesn’t see the next two messages because he’s on the planned camping trip and didn’t bring his tablet with him, packing only the essentials, but he arrives back to yet another note pinned on the front of his door. It’s an elaborately styled invitation to a video game party and a list of carefully typed instructions for the consoles in the shared front room. Clint passes as he’s standing against his door reading, “I got one too,” he nods at the papers in Steve’s hands.

“It sounds fun,” Steve acknowledged, “though, I’m not sure if I can work any of those consoles. I’ve never played anything more than an arcade pinball machine, and even those look different now.”

Clint’s face falls, “Tasha hates video games and I don’t- I can’t deal with Stark all by myself.”

Steve knows what he means; Stark’s constant barrage of personal questions can be a bit...much. “It’s OK. We should go. Natasha too. We’re Mr. Stark’s guests and he’s invited us to a lot of things that we haven’t been able to make. There’s no reason not to go to this and it sounds fun.”

Clint smiles, “You want to come down now? I can show you how to work everything before the party starts?”

“That would be great Clint thanks. Let me just get changed.”

“Sure thing. I’ll let Tash know she has to report for Mario Kart duty at seven.”

They play for hours, but Stark doesn’t come. Steve would go and look for him, make sure he’s OK. He organised this after all, the fact that he’s not here may mean he has slipped and fallen or somehow hurt himself in the lab, but when Natasha asks the computer, it replies that Mr. Stark is fine, simply working and Steve doesn’t want to distract him if he’s busy with something important for his company so declines to pass on a message. The three of them are having a great time anyway, even Natasha who had sat and scowled at them for the first hour because, “Video games are stupid.”

Now she is gripping her own wii steering wheel and swearing furiously in Russian at her little car which seems to be being driven by a green dinosaur. Steve is sure there’s significance to the characters in this, Clint and Natasha certainly know them all by name, but he doesn’t know what it is. He does know that his little car is beating Clint’s though, which is a perfect reason to give the archer his best and most blinding smile. Clint takes the opportunity to have his car squeeze past Steve’s, forcing him off the road and to a standstill, but he’s distracted from retaliating by a sharp beep. _Avengers Assemble_ reads the text on his phone. Steve slaps the machine off quickly. “That means I win.”

Clint makes a face at him as he pulls his boots on. “That does not count.”

“It does,” Steve says, in the most authoritative tone he can muster.

Clint shakes his head sadly, “Who would have thought Captain America was a cheater.”

“Who would have thought our quinjet pilot couldn’t drive a little computer car.”

“If you don’t both shut up, I will shoot you in the back.”

“Tasha’s a sore loser,” Clint stage whispers.


	4. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summary: Stark is arrogant, offensive, insensitive and everything Steve Rogers hates about the twenty first century, but not everything is as it seems. Companion piece to Iron Man Yes, Tony Stark…Not Recommended and runs simultaneously with those events.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating: PG-13  
> Disclaimer: Not mine unfortunately, though considering what I put them through, probably for the best.  
> Warning/Spoilers: ANGST, emotional Tony hurt, feels, unintentional bullying, misconceptions  
> Genre: angst, hurt/comfort, gen  
> A/N: OK, this is where events start dovetailing with Tony's story quite tightly (i.e. the same conversations) there might be some discrepancies in things like tone of voice, that's because this is a fic about misconceptions, miscommunication and how Tony Stark's I don't need anyone mask, is a lot more effective than he probably wants it to be.

**Paved with Good Intentions**

**  
**

The battle, if it can even be called that, goes well. Those involved are little more than children, desperate and alone, and they crumble once they’ve been restrained. Steve spends a few moments talking with them and reassuring them. Like so many other things, the X-gene is new to him, but frightened children, driven by circumstance to desperate measures are nothing new. The team work seamlessly together, Stark fitting without problem into their pre-practiced drills and, although he does end up talking to the civilians, he feels less like a dancing monkey and more like he’s giving the little boys he speaks to a treat they’ll never forget. It all leaves him warm inside, and smiling, buzzing with something which isn’t quite adrenaline.

He heads back to the main room after showering, hair still slightly damp, but warm enough in the climate controlled tower. There’s no one there, and he frowns slightly because, although he rarely takes a long shower, he had been the last one in. There had been paperwork which he as team leader had to sign and it was his responsibility to make sure that their SHIELD support group got back with their prisoners and the others should be there. Steve feels the first stirrings of real panic, unfounded he knows, he _knows_ and keeps reassuring himself of that, but there nonetheless. They can’t be gone, the people he knows, the people keeping him afloat, they can’t just be gone like everyone else. He all but throws himself out of the elevator when it reaches Clint’s floor.

Instantly, he can sense other people; can hear Natasha speaking in a calm voice, but one that brooks no arguments. He stops, round the corner and out of sight, not eves-dropping, of course not, but recapturing his breath, fighting to be in control of himself because he can’t expose the weakness of mind numbing panic over nothing to his team.

“I’m _tired_ Tash,” Clint is insisting stubbornly.

She doesn’t raise her voice, but it’s clear from the tone that she’s said this a dozen times before, “You can never sleep after combat. You know you can’t.” She pauses, obviously not saying something and then tries, “I don’t want you waking me with your nightmares.”

Steve hears him suck in a breath, “Dirty fighting Tash.”

Her voice is saccharine when she says, “I don’t care as long as I win.” Her tone turns low, entreating, “Come down with us, just for an hour. It’ll help you relax and you’ll sleep much better.”

It occurs to Steve abruptly that this conversation is private. He clears his throat and treads heavily, announcing himself. There is nothing obviously out of place with the SHIELD agents when he rounds the corner. Clint is leaning against his door, Natasha leaning in close, but something fierce aches in Steve’s chest at the sight of her subtly curled around him, poised to defend. “I just came to see where you were,” he explains, flushing and knowing Natasha sees.

“We were just heading down weren’t we?” Clint stays silent and the hand cupped so reassuringly around the back of his head flexes. He yelps. “Weren’t we?”

“Yes, Jesus Tash. You are such a bitch.” He turns to look at Steve, scowl only mock affronted but something genuinely hurt in his eyes, “Did you see that Cap? I’m so bullied and abused.”

Steve knows the hurt is not for Natasha’s actions, and he smiles as he starts leading them back to the elevator. “I didn’t see anything; I bet this is just you trying to get out of losing to me again at the racing game.”

The distraction works, Clint splutters and bounds ahead. “Losing! I was not- I do not _lose_ at Mario Kart. Not to someone older than seventeen.”

“You’ve played under seventeens?” Natasha looks vaguely amused.

“Only kids can give me a good game,” Clint laments, “most adults have got better things to do that learn how to get round all the bombs on the bridge levels.”

She doesn’t push him even though there are many more questions that they both obviously want to ask. Something about Clint is still too raw to be challenged. “We should get Stark,” Natasha says.

Almost imperceptibly, Clint flinches and he stops dead, coming to halt in the hallway, “He doesn’t want to come,” he says too-quickly, “he says he forgot about us because he was working.”

That almost tugs a smile to Steve’s lips because it was just like Howard to do exactly the same. More than once, Steve had had to haul him out of his lab while a pretty dame waited, all dressed up to the nines and Howard would protest that he hadn’t even known she was coming. Looking at Clint though, he doesn’t see offence at being forgotten, he just sees pain and grief and loss and suddenly he understands, working a mission, no matter how simple, without Coulson has taken its toll. “Clint,” he starts gently, because it is Stark’s house and they are here as his guests, however much none of them, Stark included, like the situation, “we can’t just-”

“I know,” Clint agrees sullenly, “I do know. I just…” he looks at Natasha for a moment and she puts a hand on his arm, giving him some of the strength she has freely. He meets Steve’s eyes and finishes, “I can’t put up a front right now and I don’t…I don’t _know_ Stark. And he really doesn’t care.”

That much is probably true, wrapped up in his work, Howard Stark’s son probably wouldn’t care if the building collapsed around him. Steve remembers the helpless, panicky feeling of not finding Clint and Natasha where he expected them to be, he’s not up to putting up many walls tonight either, he just wants to know that they’re safe and happy and be able to watch over them without scrutiny. “I guess,” he agrees.

There’s an awkward silence and Steve would give years off his life to put the smile of a few moments ago back on Clint’s face. “Who wants pizza?” he asks brightly, pushing the button to open the elevator doors to take them back down.

*

Steve has rarely seen Natasha so animated. He’s almost distracted from her voice by her waving hands. He stands, somewhat nonplussed in his hallway, still sweat drenched from his run. “You want me to talk to Stark about what?” he asks eventually when he can get a word in edgeways.

She mutters something under her breath, but at least slows down. “He said something about Clint’s family. You’ve read our files right?”

Steve nods.

“Then you know why Stark making comments would be a bad thing.” There’s a flush of anger covering Steve’s cheekbones and darkening his eyes when Natasha holds up a hand. “I don’t think he knows. I think he was just being…Stark.”

“Stark’s smart mouth is cruel whether intentionally or not,” Steve snaps, _capsicle_ echoing in his head.

“I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have our files. Phil wouldn’t have given them to him.”

That makes sense. From the stories Natasha and Clint have told of him, Agent Coulson was viciously protective of his assets, a sentiment returned tenfold, and Stark is not known for his discretion. Everything he’s ever done has been headline news and Stark all too obviously revels in that fact. Steve knows very little about Clint and Natasha’s past, he skimmed the sections talking about things he clearly had no business knowing, but he knows a little and he’s seen the shadows on their faces when it’s mentioned, and knows it’s not something they talk about often and even then only to select and trusted few. “But can’t Stark hack,” he pauses after the unfamiliar word and Natasha nods minutely, letting him know he has used it correctly, “anything he puts his mind to.”

She shrugs. “Yes. I don’t think he’d be interested in doing so though. He seems to have confined himself mostly to his lab. He probably doesn’t want to run into us. He’s not…he has trust issues, we’re in his space. I can’t imagine he likes that.”

Steve shakes his head. “We should never have agreed to move in.”

“Orders are orders Captain.”

“I’ve never been great at following orders. And surely even the Director couldn’t offer up Stark’s building without his consent?”

“Hmmm,” she agrees. “You really wish we weren’t here?”

“I hate being such an imposition on Stark. And I hate the uncertainty of living under the roof of a man who doesn’t want me here and is known for his capriciousness. It was good of Stark to agree so easily, more than I expected of him. He’s obviously trying to do his part. But…”

“I don’t think he would,” her words are certain though her face tells a different story. “Throw us out I mean. I don’t think he would. He’s usually just thoughtless, not cruel. And he has other places to go if he needs the break from sharing.”

Steve nods, but it doesn’t really ease the old fear of possible eviction gnawing absently in his stomach. “I’ll talk to him anyway.”

“Do,” Natasha says, tart tone back now that the conversation has turned back to her original point. “Clint is…he has enough on his plate without unnecessary reminders of things best forgotten. And he’s not…” she stops, and looks at him, shrewd and open and desperate all at the same time, “I think you were right to force Fury’s hand and have him instated as an Avenger. I think being told he was unsuitable would have done him more harm than good in the long term.” There’s another silence and then she continues, eyes cutting away and fists clenching as though she is betraying someone and it costs her a part of her soul to do so, “But there’s a reason he didn’t pass his psych eval. He’s not…if he lashes out at Stark because Stark says the wrong thing and he feels attacked, he might not stop. And Stark can’t stop him.”

Steve nods. He’s learned a whole new battery of vocabulary for shell shock in this century and Clint’s definitely suffering from some of it. He’s certainly developed a shoot first, ask questions later attitude, which Natasha tells Steve is new. The one and only time he’d managed to get Clint to open up about it, the archer had admitted that that was how he’d allowed himself to get turned by Loki. The trickster has been spouting low voiced, vague threats and SHIELD had a wait-for-them-to-throw-the-first-stone policy. It hadn’t worked in Clint’s favour. He’d looked feral as he assured Steve around a sharp edged smile that it was a mistake he would learn from. “Where is he now?”

“Where do you think,” Natasha sighs. “Stark gave him some new ballistic arrows to test.”

“At least he’s doing something productive with his anger then.”

“Or he’s getting more and more annoyed that Stark gave him the toy he’s having so much fun with when he’s so angry with him. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Clint can hold a grudge, and he hates feeling like he owes anybody anything.”

Steve’s lip pulls.

Natasha blows a humourless laugh out of her nose, “He’ll probably be fine. Even Clint can’t stay angry after an hour of firing ballistic arrows.”

“I didn’t know Fury had commissioned Stark to make us weaponry.”

“He didn’t. Stark just did it.”

“That was…he didn’t have to do that,” Steve mutters. There’s an uncomfortable shifting in his stomach. He hates feeling as though he owes anybody anything too.

“Don’t let it turn your head Captain. Stark’s generous, particularly when he wants something. He bought me a car when he was trying to seduce Natalie Rushman. And he was more disappointed than he’d ever want anyone to know when Fury turned him down for the Initiative.”

Steve sighs, but sometimes being the leader means making the unpleasant but necessary calls. “He’s not ready to be an Avenger. Maybe someday…”

She nods terse agreement. “He’s not used to not getting his own way though Captain. Just-”

“Well it’s high time he learned,” Steve snaps angrily.

Natasha shrugs her agreement, or possibly disagreement. “Just make sure he doesn’t say anything…tactless about Clint’s past. In fact, just tell him not to bring it up at all. As far as Stark is concerned, Clint sprang fully formed out of the ocean eighteen months ago.”

Steve cracks a smile at that image, and scrunches up his face like a little boy given an unpleasant task. “You’re much more threatening than me.”

“And I have already threatened him, which was a mistake really, had I not done so, I wouldn’t need you at all. Stark is not known for responding well to threats, as soon as his initial fear wears off he’ll be back to testing the boundaries of my tolerance, for _his safety_ Captain, you need to convince him that’s not a good idea. If I try, it’ll sound like another threat, but from you…”

“It’ll sound like rational explanation, I know. You realise if I had wanted to be a father and spend my days settling petty squabbles, I’d’ve married a nice dame and had kids the old fashioned way?”

Natasha bats her eyelashes at him, “Sorry daddy.”

Steve flushes instantly, luminously, “I- Sorry- Nata- Er…I mean ma’am…Agent Romanov- that’s not…I didn’t mean to…”

She chokes on a laugh, “Oh I’m sorry Steve, that was cruel. I just couldn’t resist.”

The blush is still present on his cheeks, and the feel of it embarrasses him more, darkening it. “I’ll talk to Stark,” he promises, words coming out almost slurred as his tongue trips over itself, “I just,” he smiles ruefully, “I need to think of a plan of attack first. He could talk anyone in circles.”

“And I’ll go make sure Clint gets something to eat.”

They part, and Steve heads to his studio, sketching absently as he ponders how best to explain what he wants to explain to Stark. He’s still thinking when an automated sounding announcement instead of JARVIS’ usual English tones requests his presence in the communal sitting room. Intrigued, he follows the instruction, dropping onto a seat next to Clint. The archer is scowling, absently stretching the fingers of his drawing hand and pulling them back and forth. “Alright?” Steve asks neutrally, testing the waters.

Clint merely grunts and doesn’t respond further. Steve catches Natasha’s eyes. She’s obviously been working out, and Steve raises an eyebrow in question. He had thought she would be eating with Clint. She scowls, but her eyes reflect concern, not anger. Steve turns his gaze over to Clint again, noting the tense lines of his shoulders and back, the way he’s fairly buzzing with pent up something. “Those arrows,” Clint spits out abruptly, “Are the best thing _ever_. No one makes stuff like that unless they want something. No one. They must have taken hours. They’re damn near perfect.”

Steve understands about a gift having incalculable worth. He remembers the first time he handled his shield. He tries to imagine being given something like that by someone he was furious with. It’s not too hard. He had thought Howard was sleeping with Peggy. He knows he would have left the shield on the table, too proud to allow himself to feel as though he was being bought off in that way, if Howard hadn’t cleared that up for him after his bitter comment... And at least he had known that the shield was a gift, hadn’t had to worry about the cost of it being called in later, in a favour his honour wouldn’t have permitted him to deny regardless of what it was. “Clint,” he starts, but at that moment the door slams open. Steve scowls up at Stark, irate at the interruption. He’s about to say something, ask if Stark can perhaps give them a moment, but the billionaire is already talking, either unnoticing or uncaring of the tension in the room.

“Coulson’s alive,” Stark bursts out with.

Steve gapes up at him, and beside him Clint goes absolutely still, as tight as one of his bow strings. Natasha looks like she can’t breathe, and the way she turns her face away makes it look as though she’s going to cry. “What?” she chokes out, softly. Hand reaching for Clint’s in a gesture he instinctively reciprocates.

Stark nods his confirmation firmly. “He’s in medical on the helicarrier, some experimental thing...but they think he’ll pull through.”

“But the Director...” Steve begins.

“Fury is a lying liar who lies.”

“We have to go and see him.” This time it’s Clint, the words are desperate, almost pained, and when Steve looks he sees that he’s squeezing Natasha’s fingers so tightly his own are white. He’s looking at Stark with an emotion that physically hurts Steve to see there, and Steve knows that this is exactly what Colonel Philips always meant when he talked about information being more valuable than gold. Giving Clint this knowledge, this possibility of salvation, the promise that perhaps one of the few people he truly loved hadn’t died in attack he’d orchestrated…for this Clint would worship at Stark’s feet.

“That’s why I came to get you.”

The ride there is tense and silent. Clint pilots, Natasha beside him, as always, and Steve stays behind them, watching their back now that they are so focussed on what is in front of them. He barely restrains himself from screaming at the hapless communications officer when she wants a reason for their arrival and it comes as no surprise to him that both the Director and the AD are waiting for them. Clint looks ready to pick a fight, to tear this place apart for the second time, but Steve knows that all that can do is make Clint’s already precarious position worse. He grips his shoulder hard enough to stop him and tries to press all his reassurance and determination through Clint’s skin, so he can feel that Steve will see this done in his very bones. 

“I learned something interesting today Director. You told us Coulson was _dead_! You told us Loki had killed him.”

“He was...for a while.” Fury states calmly, eyes sweeping over the furious Avengers. “That he was resuscitated at all is a miracle.”

“Not miracle enough for you to have mentioned it.” Steve wonders if perhaps he should stop Stark’s tirade but can’t bring himself to. He is nothing more than Captain America, he barely knows how to be Steve Rogers anymore, and the Captain America of these people’s legends can hardly shout at a superior officer. He is content to let Stark do so for him.

Fury snaps his gaze to Stark alone. “And how did you learn about this Stark? Is your AI still in my computers?”

“Oh course my AI is in your computers. As though the idiots you call specialists could remove JARVIS.”

“So what else have you been looking at Mr. Stark that would have led you to the information about Agent Coulson.”

Steve feels Natasha stiffen beside him, feels Clint freeze under his still gripping hand and he knows; he _knows_ what Fury is going to say. “How is that in any way relevant to this discussion which is about your deliberate deceit?”

“The personal files,” Maria Hill announces abruptly looking up from a tablet of her own. “He was linked to Coulson’s medical status through the personal files of Coulson’s assets.”

Natasha hisses like an angry cat. Casting half a look at her Steve can read fear and humiliation and guilt, because they all know what pushed him to that. _Back to testing the boundaries of my tolerance_ Natasha had said, and isn’t that just the best way to do it, to see where exactly he could make his snide little references, to see if he could crack Natasha’s consummate self-control enough to get her to cast the first stone. “Stark?” she asks, and beneath the ice, Steve can hear the quaver in her voice, the plea that he hasn’t done this, hasn’t done this to her and to Clint just because she’d been stupid enough to try and tell Tony Stark what to do.

“I was just trying to find out what upset Barton so badly this morning when I mentioned his family.”

Someone hisses again. It could be Clint at yet another reminder, it could be Steve himself, floored by the casual admission as though it is of no importance, as though it doesn’t matter at all. He doesn’t know and he forgets about it instantly when Natasha says, “You were _spying_ on us?” It’s obviously not what she wants to say, but there are too many observers here in the hanger deck for what she wants to say.

“You know, it’s actually ironic for you to get upset about that considering how we met.”

Steve doesn’t try to stop her as she steps around him to poke Stark hard where the blue reactor glows through his shirt. He’s dropped his second hand to Clint’s bicep, unobtrusively supporting him from where he’s started to shake. “The stuff in there is _private_ Stark.” Natasha hisses, and Steve prays no one else can hear how near the surface tears are. Natasha has done dreadful things, he knows and accepts that, but the thought of having betrayed Clint, however inadvertent, is almost enough to rip her open regardless of who’s watching. “That’s why it’s _classified._ If we wanted you to know, we’d have told you.”

Stark turns to him in helpless appeal, and of everything that is happening here, it is that which burns the most, that Stark thinks he would have indulged his curiosity at the expense of their privacy, that Stark thinks he will support him in this while Clint shudders under his hand. “You... _sneak_ ,” he spits, wishing he could bring himself to swear, but he can’t, not with two ladies present, even if Hill and Natasha probably know worse words than he does.

For a second, Steve thinks Natasha will hit Stark, he thinks he might not stop her. Clint takes a deep breath and holds it, forcing his muscles to stillness. “Back to the matter in hand,” he says, and his voice is enviably calm, “can we see Phil?”

Fury almost smiles. “You and Agent Romanov can, but I don’t think he’s up for more general visitors.” He gives Steve a look of sympathy and explanation and Steve nods, he only met Agent Coulson once and though he liked the man, he doesn’t have the bond with him Clint and Natasha evidently do, and he must have been hurt badly to be declared dead, even if it did turn out to be temporary.

Clint ducks out from under Steve’s grip and heads for the door. Natasha hesitates, pointing a stabbing finger at Stark once more, “He doesn’t visit. Agent Barton and I are the closest Phil has to family and we say no. Understand Director?”

“I give the orders around here Romanov.” Fury says, obviously unimpressed by the demand. There’s a moment of silence and then the man sighs, “He has no reason to visit Agent Coulson anyway.”

Promise secured, Natasha is all but bouncing to follow Clint, “Don’t wait for us Captain. We could be awhile.”

There’s a tense silence. Guilt eats into Steve as he thinks that he could have stopped this if he had just spoken to Stark sooner, if he hadn’t been drawing and thinking, if he had just remembered that Stark doesn’t wait for plans he just acts. Natasha had told him this would happen, _testing the boundaries of my tolerance._

“If you have a moment Captain,” Fury interrupts his thoughts, “there’re some reports I’d like you to look over. And you,” he adds, turning to Stark.

“I’m going,” Stark announces, his airy wave sending Steve’s anger spiralling higher as it dawns on him that Stark doesn’t care what he has just done, doesn’t care how deeply he has hurt both of them, all of them. “Places to go, people to see.”

“See that you get your AI out of my computers,” the Director demands as he leaves, leaving Steve to follow him. He tries not to watch Stark head in the opposite direction face still adorned in a devil may care smirk.


	5. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summary: Stark is arrogant, offensive, insensitive and everything Steve Rogers hates about the twenty first century, but not everything is as it seems. Companion piece to Iron Man Yes, Tony Stark…Not Recommended and runs simultaneously with those events.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating: PG-13  
> Disclaimer: Not mine unfortunately, though considering what I put them through, probably for the best.  
> Warning/Spoilers: ANGST, emotional Tony hurt, feels, unintentional bullying, misconceptions  
> Genre: angst, hurt/comfort, gen

**Paved with Good Intentions**

****

 

Steve settles quickly into the new routine of the tower. Clint is almost always at Agent Coulson’s bedside. He hasn’t regained consciousness yet, but Clint is determined to be there when he does. Steve doesn’t know if he wants to see absolution or condemnation in Agent Coulson’s eyes, and he doesn’t ask, not sure if he can bear the answer. Natasha returns daily, with news of Agent Coulson’s conditions and to pick up clean clothes for her and Clint. Steve keeps everything going in their absence; he spends his mornings performing Natasha’s rituals of weapon care in her armoury and checking that Clint’s bows are safe and perfectly where he left them and his afternoons drawing. He starts by drawing his team, and ends by drawing the Commandos and Peggy. He’s desperately lonely, but not so selfish as to try and peel his friends away from Agent Coulson’s bedside.

Twice, he looks up at the ceiling of the communal kitchen where the far superior coffee machine is, and prepares to ask JARVIS where Stark is. Both times, he swallows the words down, pride and fury keeping his mouth shut. He’s not so lonely that he needs to resort to spending time with a man who hurt his friends just to see what he could get away with.

On the fourth day, Stark barges into the kitchen and Steve hastily wipes at eyes which he knows are red from the tears that he never lets fall because Captain America doesn’t cry. He’s mortified at the thought of being caught crying, caught by Stark of all people, Stark who will use this weakness to probe and explore and see what happens when he twists the knife just a little bit deeper like Steve’s just another science experiment, Howard’s dark, intelligent eyes watching every flinch. He needn’t have worried though, Stark barely looks at him, just throws a black tile over to him. Steve catches it easily.

“It’s armour,” Stark explains, draining half a mug of coffee in a single swallow and wiping the mouth with the back of his hand. “Test it any way you want, let me know what it’ll stand up to.”

Steve opens his mouth to reply, to ask questions, but Stark is already gone. He turns the small square over in his hands. It’s lighter than he would expect body armour to be, but flexible enough to allow someone wearing it to have some movement. He breathes out a sigh of relief that Stark didn’t notice his tears, but the fact that Stark is so very obviously disinterested in them doesn’t bode well. He never should have agreed to allow them to be moved here. He should have spoken to Fury. He sighs and turns the tile in his hands again. If Stark wants it tested, it’s the least he can do. They don’t pay rent to be here after all, and Natasha and Clint are too worried about Agent Coulson to be troubled with being forced to move now if Steve can possibly prevent it.

He takes the tile to Clint’s range, sets it up at the back and throws the shield at it. It cracks cleanly in two on the second strike. He leaves it on the kitchen table with a note. The exercise has made him itchy and restless and he heads to the gym.

His punching bag has changed again. He strikes the bag gently a few times, he learned the hard way to test a new bag after he almost fractured his hands on the last one. He’s not sure where Stark’s getting these punching bags, but they’re more durable than even the heaviest ones he can find. He sets up an easy routine and allows his mind to float with the rhythm of the punches and finds himself wondering if the bags are an ill-conceived apology, he’s not the one Stark should be apologising to. He wonders if he should say something, but remembers what Natasha had said about Stark being generous when there was something he wanted. He gives the bag a particularly vicious punch and a very small tear appears. He batters in at it, widening it on purpose; seeking to destroy this gift that he doesn’t know why has been given. He remembers his initial fears that Stark wants his blood for tests and feels old unease surface, but he quickly pushes it down. Far more likely Stark wants to be made an Avenger. He gives the bag another vicious punch, remembering the exclusive gentlemen’s clubs Howard had frequented, his money and name opening all sorts of doors, but not this one. Being an Avenger is something different, a calling, not a place to be bought.

One day he runs into Natasha in the kitchen. She’s pale, obviously short on sleep and is twirling a black tile with a knife punched cleanly through it in one hand. Without being asked, Steve brews her a mug of coffee, sliding it across to her. He knows enough about women to know that pointing out how pale and wan she looks is not a good idea. “Starks?” he asks, smiling at the tile.

“Hmmm,” she agrees absently. “It takes a lot of percussive force, but it doesn’t handle sharps well. He’s very upset.”

Steve suspects from the look on her face that upsetting Stark might have been why she did it. He might have thought Stark had commented on her appearance if he didn’t know how disinterested the other man had been in him the few times they have crossed paths of late. He takes a sip of his own drink, hot chocolate this time, caffeine doesn’t affect him so he drinks what he has a taste for, “Still haven’t forgiven him?”

She slams the tile down on the table, the blade of the knife scoring a deep gouge in that too, but she doesn’t look angry, instead she looks extraordinarily young. “I was petty about not letting him see Phil,” she admits quietly. “I was angry.”

“You had every right to be.”

“Not with him Steve, with me. I did Stark’s personality profile. I know everything every SHIELD agent, every psychologist, has ever written about him. I know he doesn’t respond well to threats, I know he sees them as challenges and I- I-” it is a mark of her tiredness that she stammers herself to silence.

Steve doesn’t want to sit here with her where anyone could come in. Natasha is the strongest of them all, and he will not allow anyone to see that mask shattered. “Come on,” he says, and draws her gently to her feet. He takes her to his own sitting room and settles her on the sofa. He doesn’t have a blanket to wrap her in, though she looks like she needs one. She’s shuddering with tiredness and cold and grief. Steve manually adjusts the heating. He had been offended at first that his apartment came with old style nobs for temperature controls and switches for the lights, completely different to the rest of the tower which is voice activated, as though Stark thought he was too stupid even to learn how to live in this time, but now he’s grateful for something to do with his hands. “Is Agent Coulson alright?” he asks.

She nods, “Still unconscious. Stable. The Doctors say he’s doing fine and that a small coma is not unusual after a wound like his because the body shuts down to conserve resources.”

“And Clint?”

She draws in a heaving breath and blows it out slowly with a soft hum, visibly composing herself. “He’s fine.”

That hurts, as though he too is an enemy Clint must be protected from, but he doesn’t allow the pain to show on his face, merely says, “If they’re both fine, you have nothing to be sorry for.”

They fall into silence, Natasha absolutely, unnaturally, still, as though schooling herself to be so and not betray herself by tapping fingers or interlacing hands. “I knew what would happen. I just…you didn’t see Clint’s face Steve. He was so-” she stops again, and looks at him, suddenly looking like herself instead of like an uncertain girl. “Have you seen our files?”

“Seen yes. Read…not all. Assistant Director Hill showed them to me before the team was assembled. I saw your profile page, skills, completed missions and photo and Clint’s picture, nothing more. There wasn’t time. Loki had already taken the Tesseract by then. Since then, I’ve only read the things that are relevant, nothing that seemed…private.”

“Clint didn’t have a happy childhood. Or happy…anything really, not until SHIELD. Some of the things in his file, some of the things in mine are-”

“Unpleasant?” Steve suggests.

“Unpleasant is the description of my kills. The things I am referring to are…personal, secrets that should never see the light of day. Our pasts make us who we are and Clint and I are highly efficient assassins and spies. Why do you imagine that is?”

“Because of your training?” Steve guesses.

“For me perhaps. I am nothing but training. I was taken as a little girl and trained to be the perfect killing instrument. The things I have done…the number of people I have killed, myself, alone, and felt their blood gush over my hands is higher than the number of people Banner has harmed.”

Steve swallows and says nothing.

She regards him curiously, “Do you fear me now Captain?”

“No,” he denies instinctively and realises it is true, “No…I just…Who would take a child and turn them into that?”

“Who would take a boy from Brooklyn and turn him into Captain America? Sometimes the magic potion works…sometimes…” she shakes her head, and then meets his eyes again, “And that is just what I have _done_ Captain. I regret what I have done, I spend every day atoning for what I have done, but I am not ashamed of it. I’m not,” she repeats fiercely, “There is no point, and at the time it was my only option, or I believed it to be so. However…my file also contains details of what was done to me.” Her voice doesn’t quiver, but her fingers lace together, seemingly of their own accord, “and that…I am not something fragile to be pitied. I don’t…And Clint’s file is the same, different details of course, we led different lives, but a list of atrocities committed and tortures suffered.”

Steve can’t speak, can barely think. All he can see is Bucky, tied down on Hydra’s table, but he has Natasha’s face and is a child. His breath comes fast and sharp and suddenly there’s a cool touch on his cheek. He doesn’t stop to think, just lashes out, forcing whoever it is away from him. Natasha tumbles backwards with a sharp gasp and the world rights itself again and he’s once again in his own front room. Natasha is sprawled on the ground in front of him. “I’m sorry,” he says, horrified. “I’m so sorry.”

Natasha waves off his apology and his hand up and rolls to her feet, graceful as a cat. “I’m fine. You were…the word is triggered. I triggered you, made you remember something.”

Steve would laugh her off, just say he was away with the fairies as his mother had used to say when he daydreamed, but Natasha has opened herself up to him and he can’t destroy that fragile trust by doing less. “You said…Bucky was tortured. I can’t even imagine someone doing the things I saw had been done to him to a child.”

“Don’t try,” Natasha advises words gentle but tone dark.

“Stark wouldn’t say anything though,” Steve insists, voice dry, because he can’t believe someone would mock another over the kind of horrors Natasha is determinedly not-describing.

“That’s not…would you want to look at someone, someone who had made it perfectly clear that they didn’t like you, and know that they knew everything about you that you’d like to scrub from existence, every hurt, every defeat, every humiliation, every wound?”

Steve slowly shakes his head. “I guess not.”

“And at least for me, I can feel clean anger. Clint…Clint thinks it’s his payment for the knowledge that Phil is alive. He thinks he should be grateful that that’s the only price Stark asked.”

Steve gets that. He understands how Clint could have tallied the great cosmic score and reached that conclusion. “Stark didn’t mean-”

“Of course he didn’t mean. But I had a look, and I know Clint did too…you have to go through quite a lot of our files, more than half to reach anything which links to the information about Phil. Stark started reading our files, realised the kind of things that were in there and _kept going_. He must have been able to guess we wouldn’t want him to do that. You did, and he must have, because no one could read what Clint’s file says and not…not realise, but Stark didn’t stop.”

“And if he had, Clint still wouldn’t know.”

“Quite. So Stark’s curiosity and disregard for privacy worked out, but Clint…he feels cornered, and he never does well with that. Even in battle he likes to be up high.”

Steve doesn’t really know what to say to that. “Will you ever tell me what’s in your file?”

“No,” the answer comes, quick and sure. “I don’t want you to start looking at me like I’m…soiled.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“You can’t promise that. You don’t know-”

“You are my team,” Steve says, fierce and determined, “You and Clint are _all I have_. I don’t even have an identity that isn’t SHIELD created because I was born in 1918.”

She smiles at him, slow and sweet and real. “Thank you Captain.” He doesn’t ask again. He knows she’ll never change her mind. “I have to get back to Clint.”

“Let me know when I can come and visit.”

*

It takes a while to start having Avengers meetings again, Clint and Natasha too wrapped up in discovering Phil is still alive, but eventually, Fury tires of requesting their presence and getting nowhere so orders it instead. Clint sits in the briefing room, barely staying still in his chair, eyes straying, anxiously from the door to the clock and back again while Fury talks and talks. On his best days Clint is borderline insubordinate, snark and sass and sarcasm being his default modes, but today he is vicious, even rude.

Several of his words hit soft targets in Steve’s mind but he determinedly ignores them. He knows Clint is hurting and worried, knows his mind is more on Agent Coulson than the words coming out of his mouth, knows that, when he is calmer, he will look back on this with a guilt Steve has no intention of making worse. Fury too, charitably ignores even the worst of what he says.

The meeting is coming near to the end, they are just finalising a training schedule for next week when the door bursts open. All four of them fall silent, surprised at the intrusion. It’s Stark. “Director,” he says stiffly, “Sorry, I’m late.”

“We weren’t expecting you Mr. Stark,” Steve says, more baffled than anything else by Stark’s sudden appearance.

Stark gives a mocking glance around the room, “But this _is_ an Avengers meeting? And I am an Avenger.”

“You’re _not_ an Avenger Stark. You’re a consultant,” says Fury sharply, patience worn thin by Clint.

“I am an-! I flew a nuke into fucking _space_.”

“And we’re all very proud of you. But it was never Iron Man who was unsuitable for the Initiative.”

Steve doesn’t think that’s strictly fair. OK, so Stark had known he wasn’t going to die but his action had still been brave and had doubtless saved the island of Manhattan and had been critical in taking out the Chitauri. He opens his mouth to object, but Stark interrupts his planned protest. “But-” he says with a smug smirk, “If I’m not an Avenger, why am I waiving my retaining fee for you?”

“Wow Stark, you really think you can buy your way into anything don’t you? Is that what all the armour upgrades were for?” says Steve, instead of the words he had planned, disgusted amazement rising up within him.

“No! No...I was...it’s an SI project...one of my military contracts. I just thought-”

“I thought you didn’t take military contracts anymore? Or do you make weapons when you’re paid enough?” Steve snaps, suddenly furious on Clint and Natasha’s behalves about the weapons given and payment in secrets taken and furiously fearful of what demand might come next.

“It’s _body armour_ Rogers. I don’t make weapons, but I do supply hard ware. You probably wouldn’t have lost so many people if you’d thought about anything other than _putting bullets in your best man’s gun_ and thought a little more about protecting your men from what _they_ were shooting at _you_.”

Steve stands before he’s realised he’s moving, shocked that anyone would say such a thing and fighting to focus on Stark in front of him and not on the memory of Bucky tumbling down the ravine, too far away for Steve to grab his hand and then that reminds him of Stark falling, falling because Steve had ordered the portal closed because Stark hadn’t told him his plan. He’s not suitable to be on this team and he’s about to say so when Fury interjects calmly, “Stand down Captain. And you Stark. That’s enough. This is _why_ you aren’t suitable. It’s got nothing to do with Iron Man or what you can build; it’s about you. You’re a mess. You’ve got no concept of what it’s like to be in a team, no concept of what it’s like to even respect other people who aren’t Tony Stark. You are out of control.”

“I’m not out of control. I- I’m not fucking around.”

“I’m sure Ms. Potts will be glad to hear it.”

“We’re not together anymore,” he snaps.

“And yet, the last time we had this conversation, you told me that you were in a stable relationship with her. Do you not see why this might be a problem Stark?”

“She left me because of the risks I take as Iron Man; it had nothing to do with-”

“Hmmm?” Fury says.

“I’m making you proper security for your computers.”

“You can’t buy your way into the team Stark,” Clint sneers, anger, which has been looking for an outlet for days, bubbling below the surface of the words.

“Your security isn’t suitable Stark,” Fury interrupts Clint to say, giving the archer a warning looks which keeps him in his seat though his hands are balled into fists on his knees, “I know you’ll have left yourself a back door and it’s you I want to keep out. Hammer’s agreed to do it to stay out of jail.”

“Hammer?” Stark questions, and Steve looks away from him as he sees Natasha give Fury a sharp look.

“Hammer. He can be relied on to do what he is asked to do without adding his own bells and whistles. And he’s very motivated, he wants to stay out of jail, and he loves getting a contract you weren’t offered.”

“Why are you acting like this is news to you?” Steve growls, frustration building at Stark’s childish refusal to accept what he has been told. He knows he’s not an Avenger, he knows this because Fury has already spoken with him. His barging in and trying to bully his way onto the team, only serves to make Steve more and more certain that he isn’t suitable for it. “You knew you weren’t being included in the team building exercises.”

“I’ve been trying to _organise_ team stuff, surely someone must have shown you how to work email by now, you must have seen it.”

Steve remembers emails and invitations pinned to the door and is about to say something when Natasha rolls her eyes and says, “I’m sure drinking your body weight in hard spirits sounds fun to you Tony, but some of us want to actually remember what we did the night before.”

“I... I am an Avenger.”

For a second he just sounds lost then Clint laughs darkly, “You’re our _butler_ , Stark; all you do is own the building we live in. And I know you enjoy holding it over our heads, flaunting your wealth in all our faces, buying me a sports car, making sure that there’s literally nothing we own that you can’t take back.”

Natasha moves, holding Clint back in his seat with the weight of her body pressed against his, and the new surge of hot anger in his belly reminds Steve of how this man has hurt the only people left who are dear to him, reminds him how he did it without care, and the pity is burned away. He glares stonily back as Stark says, “I didn’t-”

“You aren’t one of us,” Natasha says when he looks at her, Steve can see the sympathy clear on her face and remembers what she had told him about Stark’s disappointment, but it is hardly her fault that he just isn’t suitable, that he is too big a risk.

“If you’ll excuse us Stark, we have a meeting to finish,” Fury says, voice calm and gentle like he’s calming a skittish horse.

Steve rolls his eyes as Stark spins around and slams out like a toddler sent to bed for misbehaviour. Definitely not Avengers material.

He finds himself re-evaluating that opinion when the Avengers are next called out. They hadn’t been expecting Iron Man, certain he would decline to help them at all now he’d had it proven that he wasn’t getting his own way. He’s there though, helping them push back the monsters and pulling The Black Widow out of danger when a lucky blow opens up her abdomen. “She’s...fine-ish.” He reassures them, thankfully not commenting on the panic Captain America knows is edging his voice, threatening to splinter him back into the little shards of Steve that are all he has when he can’t hide behind his cowl and shield. “Going to need stitches, if this goes on too long blood loss might become a problem, but not deep enough for organ damage.”

“See, fine,” the Black Widow repeats haughtily.

“Fine-ish.”

“OK Widow,” comes Captain America’s voice, thankfully calm once more. He has to stop as another of the monsters launches itself at him. “They’re vulnerable on the underside. Get up high, keep a bead on me. I’ll get them to rear up, you make the kill shot.”

“And I’ll just sit up here and sunbathe,” Hawkeye mumbles, but it’s clear that he’s grateful he doesn’t have to sit by the bedside of another friend.

“And Iron Man?”

“Yeah,”

“Good save.”

“Damsel in distress and all,” he banters, firing a beam.

“Call me a damsel again,” Black Widow snarks back, breathless but clearly able, “and even that suit won’t protect you.”

“Promises promises.”

“Oh little boy. You couldn’t keep up with me.”

“Maybe, but I am willing to die in the attempt, surely that’s worth something?”

She laughs, and Iron Man laughs with her as he drops into a spinning dive and picks off the chimera edging up with surprising agility behind Captain America.

When the battle is over, and Captain America is satisfied that no one else on his team is hurt, when Hawkeye has thanked him, sincerely for saving The Black Widow, Iron Man pulls off his face plate. It’s clear at a glance that he’s hung-over, and Steve, dragging his own cowl over his head is once more grudgingly impressed. He hasn’t been hangover in a long time, but he remembers that it’s not pleasant, and still, Stark had managed, and without a single word of complaint, when he must have known they weren’t even relying on him to be there, when he would have had every reason to refuse them. He takes a lift with the SHIELD agents back to HQ and goes straight to Fury’s office.

Fury is busy on an urgent conference call with the UN, but his Assistant tells him that Maria Hill can see him. Steve bites his lip, half tempted to wait and speak to Fury himself, but he doesn’t want to be here for hours. He wants to get back to the tower and check on how Natasha is for himself, and he knows that Clint is waiting for his arrival so he can return to Agent Coulson without leaving Natasha alone. He nods, and the girl ushers him through a nondescript door on the other side of the hall.

“Captain?” Hill looks surprised to see him.

Instinctively, Steve falls in in front of the desk at parade rest. “Ms Hill, it’s about Stark.”

Maria Hill puts aside the file she’s working on with a sigh, “What’s he done now?”

“No, nothing like that…I just…We would have been in much more trouble today without him, I was wondering if we were perhaps being too harsh on him? If he might be made a full Avenger?”

She regards him steadily, but he doesn’t fidget under the cool assessing gaze. “It’s your call Captain, it’s your team, but it would be against my recommendation.”

This time, it’s Steve’s turn to watch her. “If I might ask Ma’am, why?”

“Because everything you have thought about him up until this moment is true. You mustn’t confuse Iron Man with Tony Stark.” Steve looks puzzled, but before he can say anything she rushes on, “Steve Rogers and Captain America are different aren’t they?”

Steve thinks about the broken pieces of himself made up of loss and grief and loneliness and about how Captain America doesn’t have those weaknesses and flaws. He nods once, not quite meeting her eyes, not wanting her to see what’s in his.

“And surely you know the Black Widow and Natasha are different. The Black Widow is what they made of her in the Red Room and Natasha is…gentler.”

Steve knows what she means, Natasha is not helpless or vulnerable, she’s the strongest of all of them, but out of battle, not on guard she is…sweeter. He nods again.

“It was never Iron Man who was turned down for the Initiative. Tony Stark is flaky and irresponsible. Look over every event he’s ever gone to, he was only on time and sober at a fraction of those, including ones where he was meant to give a speech or receive an award. And, if I might be frank Captain, when he lets you down, and he will, the unrestricted control of your team you have now will be taken out of your hands and placed back with SHIELD and that would have consequences neither of us want.”

Steve knows instantly what she means, Clint is cleared to be an Avenger because Steve threw his not inconsiderable weight around over it, but he still hasn’t satisfactorily proven himself to SHIELD. He is still unsuitable, in SHIELD’s eyes, for missions of his own. For himself, he would risk it because that is who he is, the one who risks all he has, all he is, for others, but he will not risk Clint. He can’t. He nods again instead, “Alright Ma’am. But I’m going to be keeping a closer eye on him. He has potential.”

She smiles at him, warm and slightly amazed, “You see the good in everyone don’t you Rogers?”

“I try.”


	6. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summary: Stark is arrogant, offensive, insensitive and everything Steve Rogers hates about the twenty first century, but not everything is as it seems.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Companion piece to Iron Man Yes, Tony Stark…Not Recommended and runs simultaneously with those events.  
> Rating: PG-13  
> Disclaimer: Not mine unfortunately, though considering what I put them through, probably for the best.  
> Warning/Spoilers: ANGST, emotional Tony hurt, feels, unintentional bullying, misconceptions  
> Genre: angst, hurt/comfort, gen

**Paved with Good Intentions**

****

**  
**

After that however, Steve sees significantly less of Stark. He doesn’t have much time to dwell on the fact though, Natasha’s injuries from the battle were far from life threatening, but she still needs more help than she will ever be willing to ask for, which means Steve spends a lot of his time ‘just happening,’ to be nearby when she needs to stretch or bend to reach for something. Agent Coulson has also finally regained consciousness. Steve still hasn’t seen him; he’s still not really up for a lot of visitors. Clint alternates between being manically delighted at Agent Coulson’s miraculous recovery and black depression at what he perceives as being the consequences of his own action, his own weaknesses.

“You didn’t hurt him,” Steve finds himself insisting, yet again, to a stone faced Clint one night.

The other man shrugs, “I should have been there, should have been watching his back. Or at least, shouldn’t have been keeping Tash away from him.”

“Clint-” Steve says softly, aching for his friend.

Clint turns away, but not before Steve sees the anguish in his eyes. “Afterwards…after…I’d’ve done anything if Phil could’ve just been alive again, but now he is…it’s…it’s the best thing in the world and I’m so fucking grateful, but I have to look at him and see how I let him down in his eyes.”

“You are the only person who thinks you let him down,” Natasha interjects crisply from the doorway. Steve starts; he hadn’t even known she was there.

“I think I can tell when Phil is disappointed in me Natasha,” Clint says angrily.

“Apparently not. He’s worried about you Clint. He’s worried that you’re not…”

“Coping? Moving on?”

“Yes. You’ve wrapped yourself in condemnation and just,” she waves a hand at him. “Loki hurt you and he controlled you but _he_ did all of those things. Blaming you for what you did is the same as blaming one of your bows when it puts an arrow through something.”

“I wish I could believe that.”

“Then do so.”

“I _can’t_ Tash. I just…can’t alright.”

She looks at Steve, and then steps forward, cupping Clint’s chin in her hand and bringing him round to face her. She leans her forehead against his and says, so softly that if Steve didn’t have the serum he wouldn’t have been able to hear the barely whispered words, “Why can’t you?”

“Because I remember it and it wasn’t…wasn’t…I wasn’t a helpless _puppet_ Tasha. I knew exactly who I was and what I was doing, I just…believed in Loki. He was my…my king, my _god_ and I owed him my service. I _gave it_ to him. Everything I did…it was me not him, it would be what I would do if I was ever…if doing as someone else needed me to do was more important to me than SHIELD.”

Steve gives a harsh gasp, and the moment between the two agents breaks as they remember his presence. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be listening in.”

Clint laughs harshly. “It’s alright. You might as well know how broken I am. You should get out now Captain. I fuck everything up.”

Hand still curled around his face, Natasha shakes him. “You do not. You are not going to do this Clint. You do not fuck everything up and you do not lose everybody.”

“You going to tell me that you couldn’t do better than me?”

She smiles slightly, “Well it’s a given that I’m out of your league, but it’s not your fault I’ve got looks and brains and you’re just a pretty boy. But I don’t _want_ anybody else Clint OK. I swear. I’m yours.”

This is beginning to feel like something he shouldn’t intrude on so even though it is his front room, Steve begins to sidle for the door. As he does so, he catches a glimpse of her face, still leaned against Clint’s, eyes open and looking at him with such fierce devotion that Steve’s chest aches and he realises he would do anything to safeguard these two people and what they have.

It doesn’t take long for Natasha to find him where he’s retreated to his studio and is leant against the glass of the huge windows, admiring the beauty of the city below. “Look after him,” she says quietly and he jumps again, amazed at how silently she moves.

“Of course,” he agrees instantly, as binding an oath as he has ever made, “but…isn’t that what you’re for?”

“I have a mission; I’m going to be gone for a couple of weeks.” She gives him another look and then turns away.

“Wait,” Steve calls impulsively. She stops but doesn’t turn her face back into the dim light. Steve suspects she’s crying, “Did you know?”

“Know what?” she asks, remarkably calm.

“About Loki, about how his control worked?”

“I…guessed. Loki’s threat was…effective and it relied on being able to use knowledge I know Clint would die a thousand times before he would divulge. And when I was fighting him, he was Clint. He anticipated moves before I’d made them. It’s the reason we don’t spar very often. It’s pointless for us because we know each other so well.”

“That’s what you meant isn’t it, about the debt Clint feels like he owes Stark being all twisted up in his head?”

She whirls to face him, her face surprisingly composed and tear free, “That’s very insightful Captain.”

“You can’t lead people you don’t understand.”

She nods thoughtfully and purses her lips as she seemingly comes to a decision. “Yes, it is. Clint’s natural…honour I suppose, to repay his debts and treat a kindness with a kindness have been all tangled together with that feeling of giving Loki his loyalty and service willingly when he should have been anything but willing.” She lowers her face, shaking tendrils of hair over it to obscure her features and admits in a low, ragged voice, “I sent Stark back Clint’s latest quiver of arrows.”

That Steve doesn’t understand, “Why?”

“Because Clint can’t handle Stark giving him anything more right now. He needs breathing space and Stark can be suffocating in his attentions. Clint would take the arrows because how could he not, everything Stark produces is a thousand times better than the shit SHIELD R&D give us, and I don’t want him to feel like he owes Stark still more. He’s at danger point already.”

“Does Stark know why?”

“I…I wrote a note. I tried to explain, but…I am telling _you_ this Steve because I trust you not to repeat it or use it against him in any way, intentionally or not. Stark…Stark is not a cruel man, but he runs his mouth before his brain gets a look in. I wrote a note, trying to explain that Clint wouldn’t want to be beholden to him more. It was…not as polite an explanation as I would have liked, and I suspect it’s why Stark is sulking in his lab and refusing to make even the slightest effort to interact with us, but it was the best I could do.”

Steve lets his body language show her his acceptance. Good manners cost nothing, but Stark has more than enough ego to shield him from five minutes of bruised feelings, and ultimately, regardless of what Erskine saw in him, Steve is selfish, and Steve will protect his team at any cost. Stark will likely barely have noticed the returned arrows, he does have a company to run after all, and Howard always had a dozen or more projects running at once. “When do you leave?”

“Tomorrow night. I might not see you before then though. Clint and I are going to have breakfast and then I’m heading in to HQ to say goodbye to Phil and then I’m off.”

“Good luck. Good hunting,” Steve smiles, and means it. He wants her mission to be a success even as he selfishly wishes that she could stay here where he could see her, could see that she is safe. When she turns to leave this time, he doesn’t stop her.

He’s expecting Clint to be quiet and withdrawn the next day, expecting to have to go and force him to eat and to sleep as he retreats into whatever dark, secluded corner he can find to nurse his own loss. Clint is very nearly as jumpy as Steve about the others, but more specifically Natasha, being out of his sight, although Steve suspects his motivations are different. The last time Clint was not surrounded by people he trusts to stop him, he almost destroyed the helicarrier and helped a demi-god taken over the world. All of this is why he’s more than a little surprised to hear a pounding on his door late in the evening.

He opens the door, ushering Clint into his rooms. The archer is clutching a large white box, but his face is totally devoid of all emotion. He thrusts the box into Steve’s arms. “Uhhh…” says the super soldier uncertainly, but Clint waves away his hesitation impatiently.

“Open it.”

Steve does so, inside is a neatly folded wad of material, he pulls it out and the silky fabric unfolds to create a floor length dress in a rick midnight blue. It is beautiful. Another glance into the box shows the items meant to go with it, shoes, stockings made of black but somehow shiny netting and even the thought of them on Natasha’s shapely legs is enough to make him flush, a purse, a shawl. “It’s beautiful Clint,” he says warmly, seeking to reassure the archer. “You got something special in mind. Are you going to pop the question?”

“I- What? No, Steve listen to me, it’s not _from me_. And Natasha wouldn’t buy this sort of stuff for herself.”

Steve blinks, “Then-” Clint tugs the lid of the box from his fingers, easy enough now he’s occupied holding the dress in one hand, and flips it over, scrawled on one side of it where Steve hadn’t noticed is the untidy message: Ask JARVIS for details. “You think Stark-?”

“Who else?” Clint demands, bouncing on his feet with uncontrollable nervous energy. “He’s always wanted her, and, like you said, this is a dress for something really special.”

Steve shakes his head, “Wait, hang on slow down. Maybe you’ve got the wrong idea, from everything I’ve heard about Stark he has dozens of dames on the go. This could be for anyone.”

“It was outside her door. I went up to…to wait for Tash, I want to say goodbye properly. I didn’t…This morning when she told me she was leaving I wasn’t…tremendously calm about it, but I didn’t want her going off on a mission thinking I was pissed at her. I was going to wait, and this was just…in the hallway…and I _know_ I shouldn’t have opened it but I recognised Stark’s writing and I wanted to see what new weapons he’d made her, I was praying it was something that would keep her safe…out there without-” he stops and swallows and doesn’t say _me_ , “If I can’t be there, Stark tech is the next best thing right? I just wanted to know she was going to be safe. And-” He breaks off again.

Steve can feel a slow but boiling fury stirring in his gut. Clint and Natasha are everything to one another, and OK, Stark doesn’t spend time with them like he does, but he’s fought with them, he must know that they care deeply for one another and he’d sought to toy with that for what? For a quick _fondue_? And despite his issues with feeling like he owes Stark anything, Clint had been willing to set that all aside if Stark had just made her something that would protect her and that trust had been thrown back in his face. He feels his jaw tighten. “I’m going to talk to him.”

Clint cracks his knuckles menacingly. “I’m going to do more than just talk to him.”

“No Clint. You are going to stay here and-”

“Not this time Captain.”

“Clint…”

“No. Look, how would you feel if someone had done this to your girl?”

“I…Clint, I don’t think fighting with Stark is going to help anything.”

Clint’s face sets into a stubborn scowl. “Captain, I am going to do this. You can come with me and make sure it doesn’t get out of hand, or you can get out of my way, but I am not going to let him…Natasha is _better_ than this. I don’t care what he’s read about what she has to do sometimes in her file, just because she’s sent to seduce men and sometimes she has to…go pretty far to get the information she wants, or lure them into a compromising position doesn’t mean she can be treated like this.”

And the worst of it is that Steve, and the simmering fury behind his eyes, agree. Natasha is not to be treated like this, she is theirs to protect. “Alright, you can come with me to speak to Stark, but you follow my commands Clint or I will put you down. Understand me?”

“Yes sir.”

“Alright then.” The box is dropped on the floor, items inside instantly forgotten as the two head out, taking the elevator to Tony’s private floors when a quick request of JARVIS tells them that Tony is not in at the moment but is en route from the gala as they speak. They wait outside his door, unable to quite quell their own fidgeting. They are silent as they wait, but Steve can feel his fury building. It takes mere minutes before Stark arrives, he smirks as he sees them, already speaking in his usual flippant tones, and Steve’s anger climbs still higher. He should at least look guilty to be caught in the act. He doesn’t hear what the man starts to say and isn’t quick enough to pull Clint back when the other man’s response to Stark’s casual and guilt free smirk is to land a punch on his jaw. Steve can’t help the tiny flare of vindictive satisfaction he feels as Stark falls back, surprise clearly etched on his face, but he grabs Clint’s shoulder and presses him further back so that he can use his own bulk to fill the corridor and keep Clint from lashing out again.

Stark is already climbing back to his feet, clearly more shocked than hurt. “JARVIS, deep medical scan,” he commands.

“No foreign substances in the blood,” comes the English voice, which is faintly familiar from their tour, but whom Steve rarely speaks to and is always faintly surprised to hear, “brainwave patterns are normal. There were no guests in the tower today, nor did either Captain Rogers or Agent Barton receive or make any phone calls to any previously unknown persons. Recommend non-lethal force.”

Clint looks seconds away from attempting to fight his way past Steve. “There’s nothing wrong with _us_ , it’s you!” Steve says, anger increasing still more at the fact that Stark thinks their behaviour to be so unreasonable as to merit checking for mind and drug control when he must surely realise what response his actions would provoke when they were discovered.

“I don’t know what’s going on Cap, or who’s got to you, and I know this probably seems logical to you right now, but you don’t want to hurt me. I need you to believe me OK? I’m going to call Fury...get you two into medical for a proper examination,” he says, like he’s trying to calm an animal. “You don’t want to hurt me,” he insists again. “If you really think about it you know that. I know you don’t...don’t like me, but we fight together, you don’t want to do this.”

“You really think after what you did to Natasha we don’t want to hurt you?” Clint demands, an audible growl in his throat.

“Natasha? I haven’t even _seen_ Natasha in days. Whatever you think you remember isn’t...someone’s messing with your minds. Natasha’s fine...well...I think she’s fine. She’s on a mission, I haven’t done anything to her, I swear OK. Just talk to Fury.”

“You haven’t-” Clint neatly sidesteps Steve and presses a little forward, towards Stark, who’s show of peace turns out to have been just that, a show, as his arms come down smoothly into two ready fists.

For a long second Steve thinks to let him because Stark should be taught a lesson for this. This is unforgivable. But in the end, his conscience won’t let him. He pulls Clint back yet again and snarls, “I should let him. If anyone deserves a beating it’s you Stark.”

Immediately the soothing tone is back. “I don’t know what-”

“Enough!” Steve has had it. He’s sick of Stark pretending he doesn’t know what the problem is; sick of him acting like his actions were normal, acceptable behaviour. “You know what you did...soliciting Agent Romanov for...for...relations.” He can barely get the words out, but he still gives Natasha her title, as though hiding her behind formality will protect her from Stark.

“What?” Stark demands, and he laughs, “What are you talking about?”

“The dress, the _stockings_! You disgust me Stark!”

“It’s not _like that_. It’s...The dress was just...”

“We all know what the dress was _just_. She told me how you harassed her when you thought she was Natalie Rushman too!” Clint too tries to force a laugh but his composure is rapidly cracking, “I thought you’d have more self-preservation than to sexually harass the Black Widow. That takes balls Stark, it really does. But then, your file says that you’re self-destructive.”

“I never _touched_ her when I thought she was Natalie,” he says hotly, “It was just a joke.”

That annoys Steve almost more than Stark’s feigned ignorance, “You know who thinks things like harassing a lady are jokes Stark? Bullies.”

Stark glares at him and sneers. “I’m not harassing her. And even if I was...she’s the Black Widow, surely she doesn’t need you two upstanding gentlemen to fight her battles for her.”

Clint once again makes the ragged, destroyed sound that should be laughter. “Oh I’m doing you a favour Stark. I could have left you for her.”

“You should have. Natasha might at least have listened to me. Did you even follow the instruction on the box? Did you even ask JARVIS-?”

“Ask your robot where you expected her to meet you, dressed up for your pleasure Stark? I know what Natasha sometimes has to do in the line of duty but she’s not _whore to be bought_!” Steve presses his fingers sharply into the back of Clint’s shoulder, where Stark cannot see, to silence him. Clint will never forgive himself if he says too much here, if he betrays secrets Stark hasn’t stumbled across.

“That’s not...You know what, I don’t care. That’s what you want to think of me fine, I’m done. I don’t have to justify myself to you. I’m Tony fucking Stark. I don’t need you to like me.”

“That’s what this was?” Steve is horrified. “You were trying to get her to _like_ you.”

“Guess that makes you the whore Stark,” Clint sneers, lashing out with words while Steve holds him back from physically mashing Stark into the floor, even if that is all he deserves, “when money doesn’t work, you try sex?”

Stark leers, obviously pleased with himself, “Never had any complaints, and my little black book is full of satisfied ladies desperate for me to put a ring on their finger.” Steve feels sick.

“Is that why daddy didn’t love you? Because he didn’t want little boys?” Clint taunts, hands clenched with fury.

But that…that’s too far. “That’s enough,” he snaps, taking his eyes from Stark for the first time. “Howard was my friend. Don’t...don’t Clint. That’s not...Just no.”

The warning doesn’t even slow Stark down, “At least that puts him a cut above your father Barton,” he sneers, cruelly.

Clint stiffens like electricity has just passed through his body and Steve lets go of his shoulder, Natasha’s words about _what was done to him_ and Stark’s implications whiting out his senses. He comes back to himself as the robot interrupts.

“That is quite enough. I am authorised to use a non-fatal sleeping gas to subdue you should this altercation continue.”

Clint forces himself away from Stark’s bleeding form, wiping blood off his knuckles and growling. The sound is more like pain than anger, and it’s all Steve can do to keep him from lunging at Stark himself for saying such words. Clint’s voice is choked and not as steady as Steve knows he would like when he says, “I guess a pretty little rich boy like you always needs someone else to fight his battles for him huh Stark.”

“Cancel protocol, code word Omega 56Y7 JARVIS. Let’s get this finished,” Stark snarls, the same feral light in his eye as Steve saw when they were being cruel to one another as Loki’s staff worked its magic.

“Sir...I don’t think-”

“ _Cancel_ it JARVIS.”

“That protocol has no overrides.” Even the robot sounds as smug as its creator, “It is designed for me to protect the inhabitants of this tower, including myself, from you.”

Stark screams out his fury. “ _Cancel. It._ That protocol is for necessities only and this is not necessary. I want this. I’m choosing this.”

“No!” Steve barks out. He’s suddenly, unutterably weary. Stark did mean everything he said under the staff, Maria Hill and Fury were right, he has no self-control, no discipline and no concept of what counts as below the belt when seeking to cause as much damage as possible to his opponents. And can’t he see he’s succeeding? He has a tiny cut on his head that’s already clotting, but it must be obvious to him that Clint is haemorrhaging all over the floor, and yet still he won’t stop.

“Aww what’s the matter Rogers? I thought you wanted to see what I was out of the suit.”

The reminder of the helicarrier, vocalised instead of merely thought, pushes Steve over the edge. Captain America wouldn’t, but Steve Rogers can fight dirty too. He raises a condescending eyebrow and gives his own sneer. “You can’t take Clint, and I won’t have him responsible for another needless death.”

Stark barely blanches, but Clint growls and turns away, likely seeing the truth in the words, the fact that Steve spoke them purely to hurt Stark non-withstanding. Clint could kill him here and now, but it would achieve him nothing but more guilt, “Alright, yeah. We’re done.”

“Coward,” Stark mocks. “Come back here if you think you could really kill me so easily.”

Clint makes as if to go back, but the guilt for the vicious words spoken in anger, and for failing to hold Clint back not once but _twice_ ,is already setting in and this time Steve does succeed in grabbing him. They are soldiers and Avengers, they are better than this, they don’t need to stoop to Stark’s level. “He’s not worth it,” he reassures Clint quietly.

The archer looks up at him briefly then takes a deliberate breath and relaxes as Stark turns on his heel and leaves, “You’re right.”

Steve loosens his grip.

“I shouldn’t have done that, shouldn’t have lost control like that.”

“No,” Steve agrees, “You shouldn’t have. But I was there to make sure things didn’t get out of hand and I didn’t exactly stop you. He got under my skin too.” Clint snorts. Steve doesn’t smile at him, he’s too tense and guilty, but he does say, with some semblance of lightness, “He’s good at that, at needling people.”

“I still think you should have let me acquaint his face with a wall.”

Steve looks very disapprovingly at him and even with adrenaline and anger humming under his skin, Clint squirms, “You’re better than that Clint. You’ve proved your point, we’ve told him that such an action is unacceptable and it’s not like he could _make_ Natasha do anything, even if he were the type to try. Now rise above it, be the better man.”

“I don’t want to be the better man,” Clint sighs, but after a moment he huffs and nods. “Fine, fine, who am I to question the morals of Captain America. I’m going to the range for a couple of hours though.”

“Sure,” Steve agrees easily, “I’ll see you later.”


	7. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summary: Stark is arrogant, offensive, insensitive and everything Steve Rogers hates about the twenty first century, but not everything is as it seems. Companion piece to Iron Man Yes, Tony Stark…Not Recommended and runs simultaneously with those events.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating: PG-13  
> Disclaimer: Not mine unfortunately, though considering what I put them through, probably for the best.  
> Warning/Spoilers: ANGST, emotional Tony hurt, feels, unintentional bullying, misconceptions  
> Genre: angst, hurt/comfort, gen
> 
> A/N: A question for all my loyal readers out there. I live in the UK and know literally nothing about the cost of living in New York, can anyone give me an idea about how much the Avengers could expect to pay rent for a floor in a property like Avengers tower?

**Paved with Good Intentions**

****

 

Being the better man turns out to be easy, sticking to it is not. Stark has obviously taken their refusal to finish the fight with him badly; Clint is at Steve’s door less than half an hour later. “I’m locked out of the range, guess Stark’s pissed at me.”

Steve is torn between asking what on earth Clint _thought_ would happen, going off the deep end like that, and demanding if he really expected something different of Stark after the barrage of tantrums and sulks the past few weeks have brought. He almost – almost – turns his head up to ask JARVIS exactly which toys Stark has picked up to take home, but he doesn’t. He never speaks to JARVIS if he can help it. He doesn’t trust a robot extension of Tony, and maybe such things are normal in this future, but with no knowledge base or understanding of exactly how a creation like JARVIS works, he has no idea what it might relay to Stark. He sighs and steps back, opening the door wider.

“I suppose you’d best come in then.”

“You always sound so pleased to see me,” Clint grumbles good naturedly, but by now knows Steve well enough to have no hesitation or shame in rummaging through his fridge once he’s slipped past Steve’s bulk and inside.

“Help yourself to anything you want,” Steve says somewhat belatedly, and Clint’s head pops over the fridge door, cheeks bulging with whatever leftovers he’s snacking on while he rummages so that he looks like a kid pretending to be a chipmunk.

“’Phank oooo,” he says around his mouthful and Steve shakes his head in amused disgust.

Once they’ve eaten their way through a huge stack of random leftovers (there are always leftovers in Steve’s fridge because somehow the fridge is always fully stocked, regardless of what is still in there and Steve finds the idea of throwing food out makes him feel disgusted with himself) they decide that, since the range is off limits, and more than likely the gym too, they’ll head downstairs and play video games.

Toggling one of the buttons however, Steve can’t get the television or the games console to show even the smallest flicker of life. He presses the button harder, squinting at it. He’s sure this is the right one, sure that he’s not doing something stupid that Clint will mock him for later. Still nothing happens.

“Oh for-” Clint mutters, flicking another switch and watching absolutely nothing happen. “JARVIS.”

“Agent Barton,” says the measured English voice.

There’s a long silence, Clint obviously expecting to be asked something and the robot waiting for an instruction of some kind. “What’s wrong with the system?” Steve asks eventually, eyeballing the ceiling.

“Urgent maintenance work needs to be carried out on some of the circuitry. The media system will be offline until such a time as those repairs have been made.”

“Oh,” Steve says.

The robot says nothing.

Clint huffs. His amusement looks more forced now, and Steve knows exactly how he feels. It’s not about the range or the video games, if Stark wants to sulk and refuse to share his toys he’s more than entitled and honestly, this disdain laced generosity was beginning to get to Steve anyway. He’s more than happy for Stark to stop it. It is however, becoming rapidly more obvious just how much of the tower is automated, and Steve feels distinctly uneasy as he processes just how unpleasant, how dangerous, the most basic of tasks could become is Stark has turned the, well…the whole tower, against them. He looks at Clint.

Clint gives a little headshake, pinching his upper lip between his teeth. His face looks pinched and uncertain and his eyes are darting wildly between the doors. He’s beginning to feel trapped, the same way he looked in the first days after Loki when they had been cloistered away in their SHIELD issue rooms. It had taken Natasha days to snap him out of this, and Steve doesn’t know how to even try. “Why don’t you go and spend some time with Agent Coulson,” he suggests, gentle and measured. Clint needs to get out of this tower. “You haven’t been to see him since before Natasha left.”

Clint looks tempted, but also torn. “What about you?”

Steve’s mouth curls at one side into an amused, but slightly patronising expression. “I’m from the 1940s Clint. I know how to occupy myself with things that don’t need to be plugged in.”

The reassurance is all Clint needs to hear. He virtually sprints from the room. Steve follows at a more sedate pace and sees him stop outside the elevator, clearly determine it to be too big a risk in a computer automated tower, and bound for the stairs. Steve thinks that’s a good strategic decision. He doesn’t think Stark would hurt them, but he’s the type who would think it funny to leave them stuck in an elevator for an hour or two. He thinks again about speaking to Fury and having them moved out. This clearly isn’t working.

He’ll do it as soon as Natasha gets back, he determines. He knows she wouldn’t mind, but he hates to uproot her in that way, to have her come back from a dangerous mission to an unfamiliar space. That was always the best thing about barracks they were billeted in. No matter where you went they were always the same. And the comfort of a familiar, proven safe, space is a very real need after a mission.

Steve spends the next few days drifting the tower. He doesn’t like to go out when he doesn’t know when Clint will return and has no way of contacting him because obviously Clint has his cell turned off in SHIELD medical. They’re both, slowly, getting better, but they are both still edgy when they don’t find the other where they expect them to be. And stuck in this kind of cold war with Stark, Clint will assume the worst and overreact and that’s something he needs to be protected from, no matter how bored Steve might get.

On the third day, he meanders his way into the gym. He’s half expecting the automated door to refuse to open, but it hisses open with no problem. There’s, once again, a new punching bag swinging in its usual spot. He prods it gently and gives it a couple of light taps, but it doesn’t seem likely to damage him. He readies himself lightly on his feet, prepared for it to fight back, or some other variant, and puts his whole weight behind the punch. His hand rips through the bag entirely, tearing it in half with only minimal resistance and it throws him off balance. He ends up swaying wildly trying to right himself while a cloud of sand showers him.

“What happened?” he asks aloud, staring around with wild eyes.

“It appears Mr. Stark has accidentally ordered you light weight punching bags,” JARVIS’ voice says.

Steve jumps, unused to the calm voice; he had all but forgotten that this gym was on a public floor. He sighs, looking at the mess around him. “Right,” he agrees, because he knows it damn sure wasn’t accidentally. He reminds himself firmly that he’d never wanted Stark’s charity anyway, that it had been unsettling to have that money and attention lavished on him from someone he doesn’t trust at all, but he can’t help the irritation. He’s gotten used to being able to work out with relative ease, he’s gotten used to the luxury.

He glances around half-heartedly but doesn’t see what he’s looking for. “Is there a broom JARVIS?” he asks.

He can hear the tight, almost-anger, in his voice but the robot shows no signs of having done so when it answers, “In the cupboard across the hall Captain.”

Steve trudges across to get it and clean up the mess. It is, in part at least, his fault. It was his fist which broke the punching bag and he sees no reason for descending to Stark’s level himself. Like any other child, if they ignore him, he’ll get bored and find something new to do. That is easier said than done when he gets back to his room. He’s already stripped and in the shower when the water temperature plummets to a sudden, icy cold.

For a second, it’s fine, just inconvenient. Then a pain that has nothing to do with the temperature lodges itself in his chest. He’s shaking wildly, cold and something else, each breath feeling like it scrapes his lungs raw as he sucks it in. He’s sure he’s inhaling more water than oxygen and that makes the faint panic he can feel in his stomach increase as he coughs and splutters. He gropes for the door of the shower but his fingers only encounter slick icy glass. He makes a low sound, a whimper he’ll never admit to, and tries again, ready to pound his way through the glass if needs be. He’ll heal from cuts, but he needs to be out of here now, _nownownow_.

By chance, this time his hand encounters the handle, and the door of the shower swings noiselessly open. He lands, naked and shuddering, hyperventilating and dry heaving, on his hands and knees in the centre of the bathroom. His soaked hair is dripping water so he’s crouched in a puddle and the icy droplets still on his skin feel like the very fingers of death himself. He forces himself to breathe, even though every exhalation sounds too much like a sob to his own ears.

Wet, and uncovered, the cold is worse, and each shiver increases his anxiety. _Need to get up Rogers_ , he thinks to himself sternly, _get up, get dried, get dressed, you’re fine. Just fine. A bit of cold never killed anyone. Now get up._ A hysterical giggle escapes his lips and he can’t stand, there is no strength in his limbs to do so. _Gotta move Rogers_ , he thinks, and this time the determination is threaded with desperation, but it gets him moving and he crawls a few shaky paces until he can drag a fluffy towel off the heated rack and wrap himself within it. Curled up inside the towel like that, insulated somewhat, his shivers subside. It takes him a while to stop staring blankly at the far wall, at the still running shower but eventually he blows out an, at least mostly steady, sigh and runs a hand through his still damp hair. Keeping his eyes from the mirror, still more than a little ashamed at his earlier weakness, he finally rolls to his knees and then slowly to his feet, still keeping the towel clenched closely around as much of his body as possible.

In the bedroom he dresses quickly in warm fluffy pyjama pants and a sweater. He leaves the wet towel discarded on the floor and looks uneasily at the bathroom door. He doesn’t want to go back in there. He knows it’s stupid, but he doesn’t. “JARVIS?” he says and then pauses, shocked at how raspy and weak and fear-filled his voice still is.

The robot is, unsurprisingly, unmoved. “Yes Captain Rogers.”

For a moment Steve thinks to ask if Stark was telling the truth, or if somewhere there is security footage of him naked and shivering and terrified in his own bathroom, but, to be honest, he doesn’t want to know. “Can you turn the water in the shower off for me?” he asks instead.

JARVIS doesn’t reply, but Steve hears the water stop running. There is an almost infinitesimal pause, then the robot’s cool tones say, “Is there anything else I can help with Captain Rogers?”

There is a tone of some sort in the voice. In a person, Steve would say hesitant, possibly apologetic, but robots don’t feel emotion do they? He swallows against the self-loathing he feels in his throat. He’s so desperate for pity he’s imagining it from an inanimate source, what next? Thinking the coffee machine makes his coffee extra sweet just to be nice? “The water went cold,” his mouth says, entirely without his permission, and he curses himself for sounding like a lost little boy.

There is another beat of silence, and then JARVIS says, “My apologies Captain. Essential maintenance.”

Steve sucks in a breath. He’d have thought of it eventually, but his brain is still too muddled, too frightened or confused to have done so yet, but he hadn’t really thought to wonder why. To think that Stark had done it on purpose…He couldn’t have known what Steve’s response to the cold would have been, but he must have guessed there would be some lingering unease. Steve’s read Natasha’s report, seen the lists of all the little quirks Stark has picked up since his own capture in Afghanistan. He knows what marks traumatic experiences leave. Not, of course, that he thinks Steve’s experience was terribly traumatic. _Capsicle_ echoes around his head in mocking tones.

He bites his lip to the point of blood. He is in no state to confront Stark now and he has no wish for the man to see how clearly disturbed he is, how potent a weapon he has. “Thank you JARVIS,” he grates out, tasting death and loss, and tipping his head down as though JARVIS’ eyes are in the ceiling to hide the tears in his eyes.

“I shall resume passive scanning now,” JARVIS states and says nothing further.

Steve hopes that means he’s gone but can’t bring himself to believe it, not really. He wants nothing more than to sink to the floor, wrap his arms around his knees and sob out his desolation and terror and anger at being bullied once again, but he can’t. Not where anyone might see. He’s Captain America and Captain America doesn’t cry over a little cold water. Besides, he has no way of knowing if Stark and his robot are telling the truth, nor how to test if they are, and he will die before letting Stark see how deeply this has affected him.

It is that thought which keeps him on his feet and he feels every one of his ninety odd years as he shuffles to the stack of books in the far corner and picks one at random to read. He tries to study an hour every day to catch up on all he’s missed, and something to take his mind off what he’s feeling is just what he needs.

Clint interrupts him a couple of hours later. It’s not really an interruption. He’s barely concentrating. He’s pulled on a second sweater over the top of the one he was already wearing, but he’s still shivering helplessly. Clint obviously has news to impart, but he checks himself at the sight of Steve hunched over his book and notepad at the table and gives him a once over. “You OK?”

Steve nods curtly. “Hot water’s off,” he admits quietly in a mumble.

Clint’s face darkens as he comes much more quickly than Steve had to the realisation that that shouldn’t happen. “I can punch him again,” he offers, trying to make light, but the dark current to his voice tells Steve he is all too serious.

He’d like nothing more than to punch Stark himself, and he’s done with having other people to fight his battles for him. He shakes his head and knows he looks sullen and tries to twist his face into something resembling a smile instead of the blank mask he’s done his best to pull over whatever broken, haunted emotions Clint might see in his eyes. “Don’t give him a response. He has to get bored eventually.”

“Yeeeeaaah. Has that ever worked for you Cap? Leaving bullies alone to get bored?”

That pulls Steve’s mouth into a real, if small, smile. “Don’t know. I always fought back before.” He moves the conversation on before Clint can ask why this time is different, before Steve has to admit that, however distasteful he finds the man, there is some comfort in being close to Howard’s boy, the last, tenuous link to his life, to the fact that he existed before. “You wanted something?”

Clint looks surprised for a second. “I…Yeah…I was talking to Phil today and he said Stark’s dad managed to get hold of some of your stuff. Your personal effects and whatever. If you wanted them back. He thinks Stark will still have them, he’d know if anything had come up for auction.”

Steve nods slowly, filing the information away to ask Stark about the next time he sees him. Then a thought strikes him, “Agent Coulson doesn’t know about-”

Clint shakes his head. “He could probably restrain Stark. If anyone could do it without bloodshed it would be Phil, but he needs to be kept quiet and not unduly worried about anything and we’re managing right?”

Steve nods, he’s never really been the type to tell tales anyway, even if it would be nice to have someone be able to come in and tell Stark to stop. “You…uh, you want to hang out for a while?” he asks when Clint turns to leave. He doesn’t think he can bear to be alone again. It’s too quiet up here, and too cold no matter how high he turns the thermostat. And it’s getting dark.

None of these are things he will admit to, but he doesn’t have to when Clint throws him an easy smile and says, “Sure. You play chess?”

They play chess and cards late into the night, until Steve eventually falls asleep, sideways, on his couch with Clint watching over him.


	8. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summary: Stark is arrogant, offensive, insensitive and everything Steve Rogers hates about the twenty first century, but not everything is as it seems. Companion piece to Iron Man Yes, Tony Stark…Not Recommended and runs simultaneously with those events.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating: PG-13  
> Disclaimer: Not mine unfortunately, though considering what I put them through, probably for the best.  
> Warning/Spoilers: ANGST, emotional Tony hurt, feels, unintentional bullying, misconceptions  
> Genre: angst, hurt/comfort, gen  
> A/N: Rhodey next chapter everyone!

**Paved with Good Intentions**

 

Steve is grumpy and exhausted, having had next to no sleep since the fire alarm has gone off at regular half hour intervals all night. This morning, when he went to Natasha’s floor to do his now routine prep on her weapons, he found everything covered with fire suppressant foam. He’s cleaned it up as best as he can but there are some things which seem to be destroyed. The sodden paperback novels on the window sill and the now spotted silk scarf left folded on the side. He’s sitting in the communal kitchen because he doesn’t think he can take any more of the toneless beeping when the alarm goes off yet again, and JARVIS smoothly informs him it is simply another malfunction. Clint headed out at some ungodly hour this morning, clearly of the same opinion, but Steve doesn’t have anywhere to go and it’s raining today so wandering the city is even worse than being forced into the possibly Stark infested levels.

His hands are cupped around an almost empty mug while he stares mulishly into space when the door on the far side swings open and a tired, dishevelled Stark blinks owlishly at him, before shrugging, seemingly to himself, and crossing the floor in measured strides. His face has a determinedly blank cast, but Steve can see it twitching slightly which just irritates him more as Stark clearly knows the misery they were all put through last night.

The silence that descends over the kitchen is awkward enough to threaten to make him blush. He worries at his lip and stares at his cup, trying to think of something to say to break it. Something he wants to say. He’s not going to be the one who tells Stark just how much he’s getting to them. He still has some pride. He turns his gaze to Stark instead, watching him fiddle with the coffee machine and tap his fingers impatiently over the counter as he waits. His fingers are dirty, one sporting a clearly recent Band-Aid. He’s been in his workshop then, not out as SI meetings like he had supposed.

“I heard Howard ended up with most of my stuff, after I...after,” Steve says after a moment, he knows he sounds stiff and aloof, but after the past few days of what Stark has out them through it’s a wonder the man gets that much.

“I...yeah. Yeah I guess, he has a few things,” Stark answers, making a small motion which might have been surprise, either at the words themselves or the abrupt destruction of the thick silence.

He looks away again, back at the table top, hating to ask for anything from Stark no matter how reasonable the request. “Would you find it for me? I’d like it back.”  

“I’ve got kind of a lot going on,” Stark says hesitantly.

Steve feels a sickening surge of anger start at his toes and flushes through his body like a flash fire. What does Stark want him to do? Beg? He gives a soft sigh and tries again. “Look Stark, I know you’ve probably never had to do a hard day’s work in your life but this is important.” Stark has dozens of factories making his equipment, so the work he’s doing in his personal workshop is most likely personal after all. Despite that though, he knows his words are unfair, he’s just not feeling in the mood to be charitable.

Stark ducks his head from Steve’s no nonsense glare and concedes. “Dad’s archives are at the Malibu house. I’ve got a meeting in California next week. I’ll look your stuff out then OK?”

“Thank you,” Steve forces himself to say. He’s still a guest after all, and good manners really do cost nothing.

“You uh...you want anything else? Or just the stuff that was actually yours?”

“What else is there?” He asks, surprised by the offer

“Not really sure,” Stark answers with a shrug. “I wasn’t really allowed to...and then I was too old...” he stops talking abruptly and takes a deep breath, focusing his mind and his memory and says instead, “Uh...there’s merchandise, obviously. The kind of stuff Agent would love, and I’m sure dad got hold of some of the personal effects of the Commandos.”

Steve considers. He hadn’t even thought about there being anything else, but it makes sense, too much sense, too many of them had had no other family to send their affects to and Howard had been one of them and rich as sin and able to buy what he wasn’t willingly left once they had become legends. The thought almost – _almost_ – drags a fond smile out of him. How they would have loved know they were legends. “I...no. Just my stuff is fine,” he answers, almost regretting it even as he says it, but he knows that he can’t look at any of their things. Those losses are still too raw for him. “Thanks.” He adds in genuine appreciation.

Stark gives another shrug and says hesitantly, “You want another cup of...whatever you’re drinking?”

Steve gives a slow nod. The man’s words aren’t mocking for a change, and apparently he is capable of not being an ass when he tries and Steve would like to be more than just an annoyance to Howard’s boy. “OK. Coffee, cream and sugar please.”

He watches as Stark turns back to the machine and programmes in the drink with sure motions. He carefully, too carefully, and Steve wonders faintly how long it’s been since he last slept, stirs in the sugar. Then he brings both his own steaming mug and Steve’s to the table and sits down in a seat that’s a little too close, particularly at the large table with any number of options. He eyes Stark for a moment but says nothing, Howard wasn’t exactly known for respecting personal boundaries and Stark proved on the helicarrier that getting right into other people’s space is his first choice of attack. If it’s a genuine oversight, it’s not so troublesome as to embarrass the man, and if it’s an attack, to draw attention to it will be to concede ground. Instead, he takes a sip of his drink, not lowering his gaze from Stark’s intense look that he can’t interpret. “It’s good,” he says, because he feels like he should say something.

“Glad you like it,” Stark says, purrs truthfully, and leans still closer to Steve, placing a hand on his arm with almost exaggerated carefulness. It’s not enough to pin his wrist in place, Stark’s whole weight couldn’t do that, but it’s invasive all the same, more so when Stark’s fingers begin stroking unthinkingly at the bare skin beneath the line of his T-shirt. “Listen Cap,” the smooth voice continues.

Steve, he is not too ashamed to admit, panics. He flings himself backwards out of the chair, dropping the cup as he does so, but barely hearing it shatter. He’s sickened. Not that Stark should like men, there’s nothing wrong with that as far as Steve can see, but that he should try so blatant a seduction, with such an obvious intent, on him of all people. “There’s really nothing you won’t stoop to is there Stark?” He sneers to make up for the panicked retreat as he drags a hand through his hair and tries to regain his equilibrium.

“I...what?” Stark says, gawping.

Steve can’t tell if he’s feigning dumb or if he really doesn’t know but the uncertainty does nothing to dampen his anger. The gifts didn’t work and seducing Natasha didn’t work and now Stark thinks to try the same with him, as though he could be swayed so easily, as though Howard’s boy should be allowed to whore himself out like something cheap. “You really think you can sleep your way onto the team? With _me_!”

“ _What_?”

This time Steve’s certain he’s faking it. “You...you were,” still, he can’t say it without his ears turning red and he makes a hand gesture he hopes Stark can interpret instead.

“You don’t think much of me do you Rogers?” Stark’s laugh is filled with irritation and Steve feels a surge of satisfaction at uncovering Stark’s game so easily. He clearly expected to go undiscovered.

“I’ve seen the videos. I wanted to give you a chance, asked Hill if maybe she was being a bit hard on you and she told me that you couldn’t be trusted. And I’ve seen the videos, of you doing... _things_. With guys and dames,” he hears himself say, determined to show Stark that he’s onto him, that this approach won’t work, “and the others. What you said to those senators-” he breaks off, unsure how to say what he’s thinking, that despite the situation clearly warranting refusal, Stark had been unforgivably rude.

“They deserved it,” Stark mutters, sounding like a sulky child.

Steve is torn between saying _They deserved a refusal but your childish actions meant they weren’t willing to listen to your reasoning_ and quoting his mother’s oft repeated _good manners cost nothing_ , but can’t decide which is more appropriate so instead says, “I read the reports of you, drunk, in your suit, firing repulsors at anything people threw into the air. Colonel Rhodes had to physically force you to stand down.” He doesn’t mention the suit. He knows Stark must have given it to Rhodes, or at least, permitted him to keep it, but there were less destructive ways of doing so.

“I was _dying_ ,” Stark argues, like that makes a difference. “I was-”

“I spent half my childhood dying. I never put anyone else at risk,” Steve interrupts to say implacably because it’s true, but they all know that report of Natasha’s was made under unusual circumstances, there are notations to that fact all over it, and Steve feels for him, he does. Living every day, not knowing if it might be your last? He remembers that, from the war and before, particularly during the winter when the wind and cold had seared his lungs and his chest had ached all the time and every breath had made a whistling noise. He had never put anybody else at risk just to feel alive though, had never even felt the wish to, and the selfishness of Stark’s having done so angers him more than he cares to analyse.

“I’m paying for it now,” Stark says softly, looking away.

The sentence rocks Steve to his very core. The pain in it is completely unsuited to the moment and for a second he hesitates, then he realises and he almost laughs. This is the first time Anthony Stark’s actions have caught up with him. Usually he can buy or charm or flirt his way out of what his actions have wrought, but not this time. This time, no amount of tantrums or devious acts has gotten him his own way. “Is this the first time you’ve ever been denied something? Is that why you’re being so childish?” he says, and the anger in his voice is for Howard this time, who should have damn well taught his son some discipline.

“I’m not being _childish_.” Tony snaps his head back to face Steve and glares.

Steve rolls his eyes and says, as sarcastically as he can manage, “You’re right, essential maintenance work which takes out the whole entertainment system is so mature, making sure Clint’s authorisation code isn’t accepted on the range, _accidentally_ ordering only light weight punching bags,” his voice stutters slightly, but even through the near blinding anger and the little voice in his head reminding him that he had been ignoring these actions of Stark’s for a reason, he doesn’t mention the cold water. He won’t admit to that, and instead continues, “Fire alarms going off on the upper levels every forty minutes last night. Everything Natasha owns is coated with fire suppression foam.”

“I didn’t!” Stark lies, “JARVIS-” he starts, obviously planning on having his robot corroborate his story then he stops, perhaps seeing something in Steve’s eyes which tells him he is not going to be convinced by anything other than the truth. “Alright,” he mutters as though the admission pains him, Steve’s stomach drops. Howard hadn’t been the easiest person to get along with, but at least he’d had the personal honour to admit, and apologise with good grace, when he was wrong. “I’m sorry. I’ll fix it.”

Steve can’t stay in the room any longer. If he does, he’ll do something he’ll regret. He makes a concerted effort not to touch Stark, knowing that with all the coiled anger in his body right now even brushing against the man will send him flying into the wall. There are days when Steve hates the improvements the serum granted him. Stark makes a point to leer at him, looking his body up and down as though he’s peddling his wares on a street corner and he feels the bones in his hand creak at how hard he clenches them into fists, but he says nothing. He won’t rise to the bait.

Steve has no intention of mentioning the incident to Clint. Clint’s on enough of a knife edge about Stark as is, without him deciding he needs to protect Steve’s honour too. Steve’s honour is fine, and though it warms him slightly that he knows the man would fling himself into a fight to protect him, he has no wish to push Clint into yet another situation where he’s out of control, and with Stark’s expert ability to get under everyone’s skin, if it comes to a fight, that seems like the most likely outcome. To that end, he’s spent most of the afternoon practicing a bland, calm expression that he thinks won’t alert even Clint’s perceptiveness to the fact that there is something wrong. He needn’t have bothered. Clint comes home fuming.

“What’s happened?” Steve asks the minute he walks through the door, every sense immediately attuned to the almost crackling edge of fury rolling off Clint like too much electricity in the air before a storm.

Clint throws something onto the table, “Fucking _Stark_!” he spits from between his clenched teeth.

Steve looks at what he has thrown. It’s nothing spectacular, a simple plain white square of card. Hesitantly, he picks it up. It’s crumpled at one corner where Clint has been gripping it too tightly, but nonetheless, a neat feminine hand can be clearly read in the words, _To Phil, Get Well Soon, All the Best, Tony & Pepper. _He raises a slow eyebrow. He really can’t see why this of all things, seems to have pushed Clint almost over the edge.

“He can’t buy us, so he’s trying to buy Phil! This came with a gift. A brand new set of vintage trading cards to replace the ones Fury ruined.”

“That’s-” Steve starts.

“I know,” Clint agrees, the savage note back in his voice. “I’m going to rip his head off his shoulders.”

Steve puts a soothing hand on his arm, but his grip is firm enough to back Clint down. “It’s probably from Howard’s collection. I spoke to him about getting my things back this afternoon and he told me that Howard had some of the old Captain America merchandise that Agent Coulson would love.”

“That’s not the _point_ ,” Clint snarls, twisting his body to get out of Steve’s grip. He takes a step back and looks less like he’s going to storm for the door and for Stark that very instant, so Steve allows it and relaxes his fingers. “Captain America is…look Steve, I know this might be awkward for you to hear, but…but you were _gone_ for a long time. You are a-”

“Legend. I know,” Steve interrupts, dully, a pang in his chest at the hollow words because there is no joy in being a back-from-the-dead legend of old. It’s like being a propaganda monkey all over again, except that in this age of the internet and twitter and camera phones he so rarely gets to be a person. It’s why, he can admit if only to himself, he stays here. It’s easy to convince himself it’s about Natasha having somewhere she knows to come back to after her mission, or Clint to give him space away from those SHIELD agents who can’t see past the fact that being unwillingly mind controlled doesn’t change your face, but really, it’s about him. It’s about the fact that, only here, does he have the space and privacy to rebuild Steve Rogers.

Clint shakes his head violently in negation. “No…well yes, but that’s not…Steve, you are a hero, an archetype. Every one of us who wanted – wants even – to be a hero, or even a good person, you are the shining example, what we all want to be.” He’s silent for a beat, looking down, twisting his fingers together, and then continues, “And Phil is…Phil is ruthless, pragmatic, a bit of a bastard. I’ve seen him interrogate people, brutally, for information without changing expression, I’ve seen him kill a man with a biro, he’s stood back and let me be tortured without saying a word, but he’s…he is the most honourable man I’ve ever known,” he finishes, sincerity in every syllable. “No offence,” he adds as an afterthought.

“None taken,” Steve says automatically, lips twitching into a half a smile at the apology.

“And…when those are the dual halves of your personality, there has to be a way to reconcile it. You…you are _special_ to Phil. It’s not…I mean, some people would say do the ends justify the means, and ninety nine times out of a hundred, yeah, what SHIELD does is better than the alternative, but Phil…he weighs everything by the standards he sets for himself based on you. The man with the biro? He was holding a detonator for a bomb set in a hospital, he needed taking out _then_ and Phil wasn’t armed. He could have knocked him unconscious, but, even when you’re as good as Phil is, there’s always a chance that it’ll take one more second than you’ve intended. That’s all it takes to set off a charge like that. A biro through the eye? That kills you dead. Instantly. I’ve seen him turn down missions, missions good agents took because the end _did_ justify the means, but Phil wouldn’t do it because Captain America wouldn’t have.”

He stops talking. Steve can feel the rather embarrassing burn of tears in his eyes, part pride and part humility at being held in such esteem by someone like Phil Coulson. He only met the man a couple of times, but he heard a great deal about him, both before and after his not-death. Neither of them say anything for a second, but then Steve is forced to ask, “I’m sorry Clint. I just don’t see the problem, everything you’ve said about him…well…that gift was pretty decent of Stark if I’m…if those cards were really all that special to him.”

“You don’t screw about with Captain America when it comes to Phil. It’s…dirty fighting. Stark’s playing with Phil’s greatest weak spot. And I will not be responsible for my actions if Stark decides he was only lending them to Phil or whatever the fuck kids call takesie backsies with trading cards nowadays.”

Steve wrinkles his nose, “I don’t know Clint. That’s not really…Stark’s never asked us for anything back, and we’ve made it pretty clear he’s not getting his own way because he built a few cool toys.”

Clint leans in to him and Steve forces himself to hold firm against the venom in the other man’s eyes, though every instinct screams at him to back away. He has never backed away from a fight. “I _will not_ allow Phil to compromise himself so he can keep them. Hell, I’d whore myself to Stark if he could have them but-”

The words strike far too close to Steve’s particular sore spot today. “That’s enough,” he commands, and Clint falls instantly silent. “You’re overreacting,” he adds moderating his tone a little, a very little, “Have you told Agent Coulson about Stark’s behaviour?”

Clint shakes his head, “I told you before, he’s not up to it, and if he heard about the stunt Stark had pulled with Natasha…” he trails off.

Steve fully understands, if Agent Coulson is even half as protective of his assets as they are of him, he will not take Stark’s actions well, and from what Steve has heard of the man, he will not allow an almost fatal chest wound to prevent him from taking whatever vengeance he sees fit. “I still don’t think that’s how Stark meant it,” he says, firmly.

“But Stark doesn’t…Stark doesn’t _care_ about him,” Clint answers, sounding like a petulant teenager himself. “And you know he’s not above messing with your most vulnerable spot. C’mon Cap, you _know_ some of the things he’s done.”

Steve bites his lip for a second, fighting back the tremors at the memory of cold water gushing down on him, freezing him, at Stark’s voice spitting, _you probably wouldn’t have lost so many people if you’d thought about anything other than putting bullets in your best man’s gun_ and sneering _capsicle_. He can feel himself wavering. “How do you know he doesn’t care?” he asks, fighting to find facts instead of merely feelings, both his and Clint’s tempers run far too high when it comes to Stark.

“What does he call Phil?”

“Agent Coulson,” Steve answers, a frown furrowing his forehead.

Clint shakes his head. “Nope. He calls him Agent. Apparently told Pepper his first name _was_ Agent, when Phil went to get him for the whole Loki thing.”

Steve notes that there is no pause or waver in his voice as he says Loki’s name and files that away under improvement before saying. “I don’t know. That seems like the kind of thing Stark would say as a joke.”

Clint waves a hand impatiently, “Of course it’s a joke. I know Stark _knows_ his name. He called him by it when he told us Phil was alive. It’s just…it’s disrespectful that he can’t be bothered to remember it, worse that he wants us to _think_ he can’t be bothered to remember it. And I know I’m the last person to talk about respect but Phil’s fucking earned it OK?”

Steve raises his hands in a motion intended to imply that he has no quarrel with Clint over this. “I still don’t-” he tries again.

“Captain,” Clint says, seriously, gaze intent. “Trust me on this. Please. You could be right, Stark could be doing a nice thing just because, but what are the odds? Really? How many nice things have you seen him do since we moved in here? And how many times has he been a dick because he could be? I’d rather be wrong about this and be the guy who was a bastard about one of Tony Stark’s rare good deeds than stand back and let him have a weapon against Phil.”

And ultimately, Steve does trust him. It’s kind of worthless to be on a team with someone, to be friends with someone, if you only have their back when you feel like it, and he respects the loyalty Clint feels to defend Agent Coulson so fiercely. He won’t stand in the way of that. “Alright,” he agrees, giving a slow nod.

The tension visibly runs out of Clint’s body and he all but sags with relief. “Thank you,” he says, heartfelt. “I was not looking forward to having to go through you too.”

Steve wants to say that Clint could do no such thing, but he doesn’t doubt that if Clint felt the stakes were high enough he probably could. “I have a condition.”

“Name it.”

“You don’t pick a fight over this.”

“Cap, that’s kinda the point-”

“No. No it is not. I…if you must take this up with Stark, do so, but you don’t _touch_ him. He’s a civilian and it’s inappropriate.”

“He’s Iron Man and-”

“Not out of that suit he isn’t. I mean it Hawkeye. You lay a finger on him and so help me I will bench you from the Avengers. I took a risk telling SHIELD you were in control enough to be on this team and if you can’t keep your anger in check when speaking to people who don’t have the benefit of your training, even if they _are_ as annoying as Stark, you will be off this team until you can.”

Clint looks away, there’s a dark fury in his eyes and Steve can actually see him tallying just how important this is to him and whether or not it’s worth throwing away this position. “Fine,” he grates out after a moment. “Fine, I won’t hit him.”

“Or kick him, push him or otherwise touch him,” Steve specifies.

“Fine. But I _am_ having this out with him. Captain.”

The honorific is tagged on almost sarcastically, a challenge. Steve doesn’t acknowledge it. “Alright. We’ll go and wait for him on the common floor. You’re not barging into his workshop to have this out with him either.”

“But-”

“No.”

“We could be there for _days_.”

“Do you have any other pressing engagements? It’ll give you time to cool off a bit.”

Clint doesn’t argue further, merely follows, silent and tense and glaring at Steve now as well as the card he’s once more snatched up off the table.


	9. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summary: Stark is arrogant, offensive, insensitive and everything Steve Rogers hates about the twenty first century, but not everything is as it seems. Companion piece to Iron Man Yes, Tony Stark…Not Recommended and runs simultaneously with those events.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating: PG-13  
> Disclaimer: Not mine unfortunately, though considering what I put them through, probably for the best.  
> Warning/Spoilers: ANGST, emotional Tony hurt, feels, unintentional bullying, misconceptions  
> Genre: angst, hurt/comfort, gen
> 
> A/N: OK people, here's what you've all been waiting for. Thank yo for being so patient and sticking with me this far.

**Paved with Good Intentions**

In the end, they don’t wait for days. Steve knows they could have asked JARVIS to pass a message along, but honestly, he thinks this confrontation is a bad idea; it can do nothing but make Clint worse and so doesn’t mention it. For whatever reason, Clint doesn’t mention it either. Maybe he distrusts JARVIS too. It’s almost quarter past three in the morning when Stark finally makes an appearance, but Howard had never exactly kept regular hours either, genius, apparently, _doesn’t_ keep regular hours.

Stark eyes them both as he enters the room, but doesn’t say anything, barely makes eye contact. Instead, he curls on the sofa around a tablet computer and begins tapping on it, eyes diligently down and brow furrowed as he focusses on his work. He’s obviously forgotten their presence already. Clint goes to stand and Steve grips his arm to keep him in his seat. Stark just looks so…young, and this feels too much like an ambush. “Clint, I don’t think this is a good idea.”

Clint tries, unsuccessfully, to pull free and settles for glowering. “You said you’d trust me on this.”

“I know. I know I did but,” Steve takes a deep breath, “but what if you’re wrong?”

“Before, when you were fighting HYDRA, when you killed one of those sons of bitches that really needed killing, did you think about the wives and sisters and mothers and sweethearts they were leaving behind? Did you think about the rest of their cell mourning them? They lived together, just like you guys did, and, aside from Redskull, they were human too.”

Steve is grateful that he’s keeping his voice to a low whisper but he still can’t help but glance across at Stark. The man is still involved in his work and hasn’t heard their words. He shakes his head no.

“That’s because you looked out for you and yours right Cap? You protected your country, your guys.”

“I know but-”

“That’s all this is. And I’m not going to hurt him. I promised and I’ll stick to that, but if I’m wrong,” Clint shrugs, “I’d rather hurt Stark’s feelings for five minutes than take a risk with something as deeply personal of Phil’s.”

“I-”

“What happened between the two of you earlier?”

Steve is wrong footed by the sudden question and he knows his expression betrays more than he would like, surprise and tiredness and inexperience with lying getting the best of him. “Uh…” he says intelligently. “Nothing?”

It sounds like a question and Clint is not distracted he waits, eyebrow raised, not attempting to free himself from the grip Steve still has on his arms.

Steve sighs. “He…tried to seduce me.”

Clint’s lips twitch suspiciously and Steve feels his ears start to burn, “What?” he asks, and it’s clearly all he can do to keep his voice a low whisper.

Steve shrugs, embarrassed but not looking away, “He tried to seduce me,” he repeats steadily.

“To get on the team?” Clint asks, eyes still glittering with amusement but also something darker that Steve can’t name.

“I assume so.” Steve attempts, valiantly, to sound indifferent. He tightens his fingers minutely. “I already told him why that would not be happening Hawkeye. I don’t need you to defend my virtue.”

Clint sighs, but doesn’t argue. Instead he says, “He’s hurt the rest of us, attacked at all our vulnerable points, what reason do I have to believe that Phil is special?”

And there’s the heart of the matter, and the problem is, it’s true. Steve doesn’t have an argument, and Clint is right. “I’ll be right here. And I will bench you if this gets out of hand,” he reminds him, keeping his own voice low. He won’t humiliate Clint by chastising him in front of Stark.

Clint nods once and pulls at his arm again. This time, Steve lets go and he stands, heading over to where Stark is sitting. He doesn’t move with Natasha’s predatory grace, but he still ends up towering over Stark. Steve shifts uneasily at the deliberate intimidation and opens his mouth to call a halt to stop this before it goes any further, but Stark tilts his chin up and smirks, interest still firmly on whatever he’s working on and says, “Problem Buttercup?” in a condescending tone.

Steve abruptly relaxes. Stark apparently doesn’t feel bullied. He feels smug with himself, which means Clint’s probably right. He probably does think Agent Coulson is his ace in the hole, ready to be manipulated as soon as he’s back on his feet.

Clint drops the gift card on Stark, and says as the billionaire reaches for it, “Phil kept the cards,” Steve can hear the raw emotion in his voice at those words, the fear at the knowledge of how deep that surrender will cut Agent Coulson when he’s well enough to be made aware of this situation, “but that doesn’t make this acceptable Stark. You’ve been told that you can’t _buy_ us.”

“Well apparently I can, since Agent kept the gift. Jealous that whatever wilting flowers you brought him didn’t make his eyes light up Barton?” mocks Stark. Steve sees Clint’s hand tense into a fist, but he doesn’t give into the impulse. Steve finds himself thinking that it’s almost a pity, the man deserves to be knocked down a few pegs and taught just how sickening it is to mock the things held the most sacred with unerring accuracy.

Instead, Clint leans down, bracketing Stark against the sofa so the other man is trapped, without touching a single millimetre of his skin. Steve’s lips twitch despite themselves, Clint is obeying the absolute letter of what he said whilst blatantly ignoring the intent. “It’s pathetic Stark, that you think you can do things like this. You don’t even know his name. You had your secretary send him your-”

It’s Stark who makes things physical first. Dropping his computer in a careless motion that irritates Steve, who grew up with the necessity of being careful with his things paramount, almost more than the words coming out of his mouth, and stands, forcing Clint back with a strength Steve wouldn’t have credited him with. “That’s enough,” he says, real steel in his tone. “You can say whatever you want about me, but you don’t talk about Pepper like that. She’s worth a dozen of you, and she’s not my secretary.”

To his credit, Clint doesn’t retaliate, nether physically nor by lashing out against Ms. Potts who is an innocent in all of this, and perhaps doesn’t know how vile Stark can be. Steve is all too aware of Howard’s, and even sometimes Bucky’s, ability to be unerringly chivalrous and charming and never moody or tense when wooing a pretty dame. “You were told not to go near him,” he says instead, “That includes gifts Stark.”

Stark gives a smirk that makes him look almost monstrous. “As you pointed out, I didn’t send this. And Agent and Pepper are friends.” Steve can’t see Clint’s face from his angle, but Stark must see some expression because he almost immediately carries on with, “Didn’t know that? Didn’t he mention her? I guess beautiful red heads are his type Barton, and even if they weren’t it’s not like someone like you would have a chance. Maybe he’s fucking Natasha too.”

“Shut your mouth,” Clint snaps and Steve’s had enough. He does stand this time and crosses the room in a couple of brisk strides, forcing his way between them.

He can’t really expect Clint not to retaliate to that, and god knows, Stark deserves it. He’s sick of the pure poison in the man’s every word. “I’ve had just about enough of you,” he says, glaring down at Stark, using his own superior height and bulk for intimidation this time. He doesn’t have to put up with this any longer, he’s big and powerful enough to defend his friends, just like Bucky always defended him, even if it is just from vicious words and not fists in a side street, he knows as well as anyone that words can leave the deepest scars. “You are everything repugnant about this century Stark, materialistic, hedonistic, willing to do anything to gratify yourself, regardless of the cost to others. You don’t know the meaning of duty or honour. You’ve never had to work for anything a day in your life. Everything you’ve ever wanted has been handed to you on a silver platter and when you’re denied something,” a breathless laugh, born of loss and sorrow and anger huffs out of him, “you turn into a bratty child. You’ve spent the last few weeks throwing the kind of tantrums I wouldn’t tolerate from a four year old, and you demean everyone around you by assuming that we will take your bribes, or can be bought with your body. Just because you...you slut around-”

There’s a movement suddenly on the far side of the room and Steve has half lifted his gaze from Tony to see what it is, has just enough time to catch a glimpse of a tall, powerfully built black man in an Air Force uniform when a punch lands solidly on his jaw, snapping his teeth together with a click which is lucky not to catch his tongue. He’s more surprised than hurt and can only blink at the new comer as the man says, “How _dare_ you,” in a tone more poisonous than anything Stark has ever uttered.

Steve reaches a hand up, massaging his jaw in an insolent move. He feels Clint shift beside him, ready to do battle should Steve give the word. “I’m sorry, who are you? And why are you in my house?”

“This is _Tony’s_ house and I’m here as his guest,” the man responds, hot anger in every syllable and abruptly Steve recognises him. He’s seen this man’s file, or at least, the addendum about him added to Stark’s file. He’s Colonel Rhodes.

“Actually,” Stark interrupts, sounding weary, “it is his house. I signed the tower over to the Avengers a fortnight ago, so that they could continue living here rent free if I died.”

Steve spins his gaze to Stark. Beside him, he knows Clint has just done the same, though doubtless the archer is keeping the new threat in his periphery, “You never said that,” Steve says, uncertain if he should take Stark’s word for such an improbable action.

Stark gives an insolent shrug and Steve would probably have said something, have kept pursuing this line of questioning, but Colonel Rhodes is talking.

“You know, I went into the military because of you. You were everything I wanted to be. My little brother and I spent half our childhoods pretending to be Captain America and Bucky Barnes. I wanted to _be_ you so much.” Steve starts to automatically thank him, like he would any other fan, but Colonel Rhodes fixes a truly venomous stare on him and he falls silent. “That you cheated your way into the army because you didn’t like bullies was legend Captain. And now I find out you are one.”

“I’m not-” Steve refutes, his own fury rising once again.

“I’m sorry,” Colonel Rhodes mocks, parroting his own turn of phrase from a few moments before, “what would _you_ call someone who continually ridicules another person’s friendship overtures?”

“Stark’s not-” he tries to explain.

“ _Tony_ has been nothing but nice to you. He invited you into his home, hell, he _gave you_ his home, if I know anything about him he’s done nothing but shower you with new toys.”

Steve has to admire the man’s bull-headed loyalty.

“Oh yes,” Clint sneers, tolerance not extending to listening to someone sing Stark’s praises. Steve’s surprised he’s stayed quiet this long. “In between sexually harassing everyone except me.”

“Tony?” Colonel Rhodes says, firm, and obviously commanding an explanation. Steve feels a surge of vicious delight that Stark is about to be exposed for what he is. He can’t help but feel respect for a decorated military man like Rhodes and doesn’t understand why he’s tolerated Stark all these years unless Stark has had him fooled.

“I...Cap thought I was hitting on him. I wasn’t,” Stark says softly, turning to the Colonel, “I...I don’t know. I fucked up.”

For a second, Steve feels unsure, though he’s not sure _how_ he could have been misinterpreting what happened in the kitchen, then Clint demands, “Let’s assume that’s true Stark. What about Natasha?”

Stark gives a laugh filled with such weariness that Steve can’t help but pity him for a second, “The dress yeah? That’s what you’re pissed about?”

“Yeah Stark, _the dress_ ,” Clint spits, his own anger having not abated in the slightest.

“Dress Tony?”

Stark can’t meet anyone’s eyes, and again Steve feels the surge of victory, but it fades quickly, becomes icy and guilt ridden in his stomach as Stark’s low, shamed voice mutters, “I made it. It was an SI project, body armour that could be worn as normal clothes. I thought...I thought a body armour dress would be something Natasha could use. Everything else was just...I got over excited, kept making stupid spy gizmos.”

He goes silent again, and all Steve can hear is the blood pounding in his own ears, “What gizmos?” Colonel Rhodes asks, and Steve forces himself to pay attention.

The low voice continues, “The stockings unravel to form a rope, everything in the purse is for sabotage, poisons, acid. The shoes have knives in the soles.” Colonel Rhodes snorts and even Stark musters a tiny smile. Steve feels like he might never smile again. His face has frozen into an expression of pure horror. “I know. I know. But I was on a roll by then, I couldn’t resist.”

“Why didn’t you _say_ anything?” He manages to say, _What have I done?_ all he can think, all he can hear.

“I had a thing to go to that night, and she was leaving on her mission. I wanted her to have it. That’s why I wrote on the box to ask JARVIS, he’d have talked her through it. I didn’t...didn’t mean...”

“It’s OK,” Colonel Rhodes soothes when Stark’s voice cracks. “What else?” he asks, and he turns back to the others.

Steve doesn’t want to hear any more. He wants to crawl under a rock and hide away. He’s never been so ashamed in his life. No beating, no amount of being paraded in a stupid, skin tight outfit, was as bad as this, as bad as knowing he has wronged someone who, it now appears, deserved his gratitude and respect and who was instead given his irritation and disdain. He hadn’t liked Stark, and he’d used that as an excuse to twist every one of the man’s action.

“You kept...giving us stuff,” Clint manages; it’s more than Steve could have done.

It’s Colonel Rhodes who says, with a definite bite to his voice, “That’s just Tony. That’s just what he does for people he likes. Something you’d have found out if you’d bothered to spend any time with him.”

“We thought...” Clint begins and then trails off.

“I know what you thought,” Colonel Rhodes gives a smile that makes Steve shudder, but he can’t look away, he deserves this man’s anger, and he can’t even _look_ at Stark, not after what he’s done, “not everyone is as shallow as you Agent Barton. Some people like to just give things.”

The Colonel’s words anger Clint once more and he finds enough rage to muster another attack. “You hacked our files.”

“What I said about your family obviously really hurt you,” the man explains, “I wanted to make sure I didn’t tread on any other sore spots. Agent already gave me the files anyway; I just didn’t have time to read them before, what with Loki and everything.” And it’s so logical when he says it like that.

“And _that_. His name is Phil, or Agent _Coulson_ ,” Clint bites out, clinging desperately to the idea that they aren’t mistaken, that they haven’t been so utterly, unforgivably, wrong.

Stark, who’s been looking at the floor for the past few minutes manages a glare of his own at that. “I know. It’s an inside joke.”

“You have inside jokes with Phil?”

“He used to be my babysitter.”

He was there during Natasha’s report. Steve knows that. He knows Agent Coulson volunteered to bring Stark in when the whole Loki thing began. He knows how affected Stark was by Coulson’s death. He’d been there, had seen the tears in his eyes. How could he not realise that there was a perfectly good reason to assume that they had some kind of relationship, that Stark, even if he didn’t know him as well as Clint and Natasha, cared for him at least somewhat? It isn’t guilt in his stomach now, it’s pure self-loathing.

No one says anything, Steve doesn’t think he can. “If that’ll be all gentlemen?” Colonel Rhodes glares round the room once more. Steve stays firmly at attention and meets the gaze for a second before bowing his head under it, firmly chastised. “Come on, Tony,” he says, “Show me what you’ve been working on.”

Steve goes to follow, but Clint pulls him back. “Leave him,” he says, voice rough, “I don’t think Stark wants anything to do with us right now. And I think Rhodes might put a bullet in you if you try.”

Steve thinks he’d quite like the bullet. He’d deserve it at least. He pushes a hand through his hair, making it stand on end and looks blankly, unseeingly, around the room, “What have we _done_?” he murmurs.

“Fucked up,” Clint answers succinctly and Steve barks out a laugh that’s burgeoning on hysteria. He thought he was rebuilding himself here, learning how to be Steve Rogers again instead of Captain America one hundred percent of the time, but this isn’t who he wants to be. This isn’t who Professor Erskine chose. This isn’t what he’s supposed to be.

He feels raw and ragged and destroyed from the inside out as he sinks into the chair Stark had vacated when Clint had started insulting Ms. Potts. “ _God_ ,” he says softly, the word sounding more like a sob than anything else.

Clint, smart mouthed Clint with an answer for everything, says nothing, just looks blankly at him, waiting for instructions.

Steve can’t even try to pull himself together. There’s a voice in his head reminding him insistently that a Captain doesn’t show weakness before his men, that he should slink off to his own rooms to lick his wounds and nurse his shame in privacy, but he can’t, can’t move, can’t make himself do anything. It’s not important, it’s not like he deserves to be Captain America or leader of the Avengers. No wonder he couldn’t reclaim any sort of identity, he _isn’t_ himself any more.

“God Steve, I’m sorry,” Clint says after another long, horror filled moment. His voice sounds raw. “I told you I fuck everything up.”

Steve shakes his head, but doesn’t meet Clint’s eyes. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to meet anyone’s eyes ever again. “’S not your fault,” he says, subdued and rough, “I’m- I make my own decisions Clint. I did this, not you. I’m supposed to- I know better.”

“I made you though, I asked you to trust me. I-”

 _No man is responsible for another’s honour_ , Steve thinks but doesn’t know how to articulate. “Why did we never just _ask_ him why he did certain things?” he says instead, face and voice wrenched with misery. “We could have _asked_.” Clint doesn’t answer and Steve thinks he would sell his very soul to go back and make this better, to act better, to be the person he has always tried to be. “We have to leave; we can’t just keep living on Stark’s charity after how we’ve behaved towards him. It’s…obscene,” is the only word which comes to mind.

“I-” Clint hesitates, shifts on his feet in that peculiar way all soldiers have when they’re asking for permission to speak freely and straightens his shoulders to say, “I’d like to apologise to Stark first Cap.”

Another agonised bolt of horror swoops through Steve’s gut. He hadn’t even _thought_ of that, that which should have been his first thought. He should be apologising to Stark on bended knee and instead all he had been able to think of was of leaving, of not having to bear the shame of looking at him anymore. “Of course, you’re right. We need to apologise. But…he can’t be expected to…he should have turned us out weeks ago.”

“Just think how we’d’ve taken that,” Clint says darkly.

Steve swallows. He knows exactly how he would have interpreted such an action only a few short hours ago, as Stark taking away his toys because the game wasn’t being played to his specifications. “Even so,” he says, and his tone holds nothing of its usual strength.

“If I may Captain,” a voice interrupts.

They both jump as JARVIS speaks. Steve can’t answer, doesn’t know what to say. His face flames brightly at the knowledge that JARVIS will have captured his every despicable action as a private record, but he manages a short nod.

“I cannot violate sir’s privacy by showing you the footage being recorded in the workshop right now, but I do not believe he will take your leaving in the way you mean it Captain.” The voice is firm and brooks no argument. “He will perceive it as yet another rejection.”

“It’s not…” Steve should feel stupid, trying to explain himself to a robot, computer, whatever JARVIS is and now he wishes he had listened when Stark had tried to explain instead of assuming the man was merely boasting about his achievements. “We’re not rejecting him JARVIS. We…we don’t deserve this,” he waves a hand encompassing the room and the tower, “Any of it.”

“No,” JARVIS agrees, instant and emotionless. Steve blinks his surprise. “You do not. You have grievously hurt someone who has done nothing but try his best to meet your standards. You have rejected and put him down at every turn, you have done nothing but assume the worst of him, and _you_ , Agent Barton, have assaulted him while Captain America looked on and said nothing but that he _deserved_ a beating.

Steve knows nothing about computers that talk or about robots, but he doesn’t think they should have such audible condemnation and disgust in their tones. “Sorry,” he says, flushing deeply once more as he _remembers_ all the awful, unjust things he has said to Stark. Clint echoes him.

JARVIS does not even acknowledge their apologies. He merely continues, “However, despite all of these things being _your_ cruelty, sir believes them to be of his own making, certain that neither of you would behave such if not for some flaw within himself. If you leave now, he will believe that you saw Colonel Rhodes being needed to do what sir himself would not and defend him, as a weakness and that you have left.”

“He can’t possibly want us here now,” Steve argues.

JARVIS doesn’t answer, instead Steve hears:

 _“You should have told one of us Tony. You should have told me or Pepper that this was happening.”_ It’s Colonel Rhodes’ voice and Steve can’t help but agree with his words. If Stark had told someone sooner, he could’ve been stopped earlier. He could have spared Stark some of the misery he put him through. It is not a weakness to need someone to watch your back, he should have been there for Stark and he wasn’t. Stark should have turned to someone, anyone, else.

His breath catches at Stark’s reply. _“My poor fragile pride is already mortally wounded Rhodey, I don’t think it’d have survived telling everyone that I was so fucking worthless Captain America wouldn’t invite me to his bonding exercises, that flying a nuke into space doesn’t guarantee you a place with the Avengers.”_

_“This is fucked up.”_

_“I know I am.”_

“That’s not what he said,” Clint mutters, seemingly unable to stop himself, “It’s us who fucked up Stark.”

Steve shushes him in time to hear Colonel Rhodes say, a little sharply, _“-not what I said. God, you really should never meet your heroes huh?”_

_“Don’t be like that Rhodey, he’s a good guy. He just...doesn’t like me, but that’s true of half the population. I need a drink. You want a drink?”_

_“Sure.”_

The recording cuts off, leaving Steve feel approximately two inches tall. He bows his shoulders, head hanging and JARVIS speaks again, “Do you understand now?” The English voice is sharp, unsympathetic, “ _worthless, fucked up_ , that is what sir thinks of himself. How do you think he will take your leaving?”

“I…” his throat tightens and he can’t say anything.

“We’ll stay,” Clint pledges, next to him, speaking for the both of them with great certainty. “We’ll stay until he sees this is our mistake.”


	10. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summary: Stark is arrogant, offensive, insensitive and everything Steve Rogers hates about the twenty first century, but not everything is as it seems. Companion piece to Iron Man Yes, Tony Stark…Not Recommended and runs simultaneously with those events.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating: PG-13  
> Disclaimer: Not mine unfortunately, though considering what I put them through, probably for the best.  
> Warning/Spoilers: ANGST, emotional Tony hurt, feels, unintentional bullying, misconceptions  
> Genre: angst, hurt/comfort, gen

  **Paved with Good Intentions**  


Steve doesn’t sleep easily. He dreams that he’s standing in front of a mirror, peeling his skin off strip by strip, and beneath his face is the laughing visage of Redskull, _Bad becomes worse_ , he hears Erskine echo in his head and he wakes with a jolt. He goes to the kitchen. He had skipped dinner last night to stay with Clint in the main area. Afraid, he recalls bitterly, that Clint would give Stark the thrashing he deserved if Steve wasn’t there to be more charitable. The thought makes him feel sick now, but he also feels weak and shaky, one of the downsides of this super metabolism is that he simply can’t endure long periods without food the way he was once able to.

Clint is already there. His wan, drawn face tells Steve he has barely slept, if at all too. It doesn’t help his guilt when he finds that the kitchen is, as always, stocked with enough food to feed a small army, or him. It’s worse somehow to know that Stark does that deliberately, to keep them, keep _him_ , happy and comfortable, and is not simply a product of excess. He makes what he wants and heaps up his plate before dropping down next to Clint to pick listlessly at it. They don’t speak, too tired and too heartsick for casual conversation.

The door to the kitchen opens abruptly and Steve raises startled eyes to meet Colonel Rhodes’ almost black with fury ones. He goes to rise, the man is right not to want him anywhere near Stark now. He forfeited that right with his own earlier actions. Clint follows suit, but when the Colonel lets out a low growl, clearly intimating what JARVIS said last night, that they might not be trusted in Stark’s company, but that they had better damn well stay there as so as not to make him think they were leaving because they had no wish to be near him.

Steve can’t even raise his gaze from the table, much less speak. He stirs his scrambled egg around his plate with a fork.

There’s the scrape of a chair being pulled out and a soft thud as someone drops into it then, Stark says, incongruously loud and cheerful, “I want pancakes, blueberries and chocolate chips.” This time, Steve can hear the determined mask covering everything Stark seeks to hide and it puts a knife into his gut that he didn’t notice it before. Stark sounds like _Clint_ when he’s at his most angry.

Colonel Rhodes evidently chooses to obey Stark’s demand and begins bustling about the kitchen getting out what he will need. Steve doesn’t turn to watch him despite the fact that the practically visible clouds of rage pouring off the man suggest he would like nothing more than to put a knife into Steve. If he chooses to for the hurt Steve has caused here, he will accept it as his due. Still, the anger in Colonel Rhodes’ motions as he the readies the things for Stark’s breakfast can’t help but make Steve flinch with every clang and crash.

Clint, having clearly decided that any apology will be inadequate no matter how sincere, tries to make up for past behaviour and by valiantly attempting to do what they should have done from the start. “Morning Stark,” he matches Stark’s cheerful tone perfectly. “Nice place you have here.” Steve wishes he could sink through the floor and disappear as it occurs to him that none of them said that before. Stark opened up this incredible tower to them, gave them every luxury he could think of, and none of them even told him it was _nice_.

“...I...guess.” Stark sounds shocked and confused at Clint’s pleasant tone and Steve stares harder at his plate. No one should sound so confused by common courtesy.

“So what are you up to today? I was thinking you could come down to the range with me, if you’re not busy. Look at the mass produced crap SHIELD R&D are foisting off on me and give them a few pointers, show them where they’re going wrong? I left that box for Natasha on her bed by the way. Please don’t tell her I moved her stuff, she’ll be pissed and she frightens me. The weather’s good though, we could go out, put my new car through its paces?”

“Tony’s busy today,” Colonel Rhodes answers, slamming a plate in front of Stark. He had been expecting that response, but Steve can’t help but feel hurt at the rejection and winces visibly, blushing, at the sudden understanding of how Stark must have felt all too frequently over the last weeks.

“Fair enough, it was kind of last minute,” Clint says calmly, but Steve can feel in the way his body is suddenly, subtly closer to Steve’s, that he has felt the same wave of loss and hurt and understanding and renewed shame, “By the way, if you have half an hour, you should stop by and see Phil later. He’s been asking about you.”

Colonel Rhodes growls another audible warning and Steve flinches again at the stark reminder that they had kept a man from someone he regarded with respect at least if not fondness.

Clint is not going to be deterred from his mission to make up for every time they excluded Star over the last weeks, “You’ll have to come to the next video game night though Stark. I still can’t beat your high score on the wii. And we’re going to have a cartoon night, show Steve everything he’s missed out on. Which is your favourite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle?”

“Donatello.”

Clint nods. Steve is impressed with his sheer nerve. He can’t keep from cowering under Colonel Rhodes’ rage, but then, Clint dates Natasha, something that for all his fondness for her, Steve would not do. “Speaking of TV shows, has it occurred to you that your suit is Lannister colours?”

That brings another light flush to Steve’s face. They had watched Game of Thrones together and had laughed, somewhat mean spiritedly about that fact. He can’t help but begin look up at Stark, to see how he has taken such a comment, but there is a third warning growl and his shoulders hunch, quite without his intending them to, and his gaze stays where it is.

“Think we should start a blog Stark? It would be the most popular thing on the internet; tumblr is already obsessed with us. And I mean, OK, some of our missions are classified and shit, but some of them are just stupid.”

“I think Fury would...what does Fury do to people? Keelhaul them?”

“You think Fury’s on tumblr?”

“Sir,” JARVIS says suddenly, “Ms. Potts has let me know that she will be arriving at the tower in approximately one hour, she will be expecting to meet you all in the conference room at that time.”

“We have a conference room?” Steve nudges him. Having shut down his brain to mouth filter, Clint is now saying each and everything he thinks of, “Can Ms. Potts even order us around?”

Steve cringes slightly. They are in no position to object to an order given by Tony’s friends. Hell, he would seek to take retribution in the form of a pound of flesh from someone who treated Clint how they have treated Stark.

“If you can’t use words you don’t get an opinion,” Stark says to Colonel Rhodes as he makes a sound which echoes Steve’s thoughts and then continues to Clint in a joking tone, “And honestly, I’ve just stopped questioning what Pep can and can’t do. It’s never worth risking her wrath. She _glares_.”

Clint doesn’t object further. They both know Tony’s friends have the right to exact whatever vengeance they want on Tony’s too-forgiving behalf. “Fine, I guess I’ll go and get ready.” Steve leaves with him and he’s never felt like a coward quite as much as he does in that moment.

He half expects Clint to comment on it, comment on the fact that the great Captain America couldn’t even speak around the lump is throat, but he doesn’t. He just looks at Steve, blank horror in his eyes now his constructed friendliness and joviality has been dropped. “Did you see it?” he whispers hoarsely, “Did you hear it?”

Steve nods, still mute. Listening to what was happening instead of what he expected to hear, how could he not notice the raw vulnerability and the desire to be included Stark has just pouring out of him like blood from a bullet wound. They should have been protecting this man, who in matters like this, utterly lacks the tools and knowledge to protect himself, and instead they had tortured him.

Steve doesn’t know how he manages it, every movement a struggle of will when he wants to just lie down and never get up again, but somehow he is showered and in clean clothes and waiting in the conference room at the hour specified. His stomach falls as he hears Ms. Potts approaching, heels clicking on wood. He doesn’t want anyone else to know how low he has sunk. Still, at least the deserved punishment can finally descend instead of this waiting. Clint must feel it too. Even he has finally fallen silent. He stands as she enters. He feels like he’s in front of a firing squad, except that he would have raised his head to look at a firing squad like a man, but he can’t even muster that, just keeps his eyes on the ground.

Ms. Potts clicks her tongue, “Gentlemen, what seems to be the problem?” she asks, shutting the door smartly.

There is a long silence. Then Stark bursts out, “Rhodey hit Captain America.”

If possible, Steve feels even worse. He’s fucked this man up so badly that he’s just betrayed the only person who has helped him.

“Rogers started it,” Colonel Rhodes says, irritably.

“In all fairness,” Clint interjects, “I started it.”

Steve can’t let another take the fall for him in this, not if he is ever to be able to look himself in the eye in the mirror again. “That’s not...Clint didn’t...this is my fault ma’am. We’ve...all of us...we’ve behaved unforgivably towards Mr. Stark, but it’s my team, my responsibility, I should have said something. I should have stopped them...us.”

“Tony?” Ms. Potts says, in the same demand for explanation Colonel Rhodes gave last night. Once again, Steve curses himself for never once asking for an explanation, for assuming he understood Stark’s actions when even the two people closest to him clearly do not.

Stark doesn’t answer, still defending them, and Steve would confess to everything and beg forgiveness, but Colonel Rhodes gets there first. “Did you know Tony wasn’t an Avenger Pepper?” his tone is steel at the core for all its softness.

“No,” Ms. Potts says, sharp and confused.

“I’m a _consultant_ ,” Stark explains, and again Steve can hear it, the absolute rawness of the feeling that he isn’t good enough wrapped in layers of snark and arrogance and determination not to expose the chink in his armour.

“I know he didn’t used to qualify, that Natasha’s original report was...but that was months ago. When Phil came to get him during the whole Tesseract business I thought...”

“Apparently not,” Stark interrupts.

“I’ll speak to Fury,” Steve promises, it’s the least he can do, “of course you’re one of us.”

“Why?” Stark demands, arrogance and pride coming to the fore, as he tilts his chin up, “Why now? I don’t want to be an Avenger just because you feel _sorry_ for me.”

“That’s not...You didn’t qualify because...because we misinterpreted your actions. Stark, all we’ve done for weeks is treat you like,” Steve swallows hard and breaks eye contact. He can’t look at what is in Stark’s eyes. He just _can’t_. “And you, you’ve made us everything we could ever want, been there for every battle, you’ve saved all of our lives and all of it without complaint, despite how we’ve treated you.” 

“It’s not your fault, I act like an insufferable ass, I can’t really blame you when you assume I actually am an insufferable ass.”

“I’m an insufferable ass too,” Clint confides, “I should have known better than to judge you for being one.”

Ms. Potts glares at them all. She’s a foot shorter than Steve and slender, fragile looking, but there is steel and anger and determination radiating out of her now, an animal poised to protect its’ young and Steve, for an instant, feels afraid of what she will do. “And _how_ exactly did you misinterpret Tony’s actions?” her very tone explains the danger they are in.

Steve forces himself to answer because he knows Stark won’t and he deserves whatever punishment she doles out. He won’t compound his deplorable behaviour by refusing to own up to it. “We thought he was trying to buy his way onto the team. We were-”

“But didn’t Howard make all of your original armour?”

He can only nod.

“And all without wanting anything in return from you?”

He nods again. He knew all of this, knew all about the generosity there was no reason to assume Stark hadn’t inherited along with his dark hair and eyes and smirking smile.

“So why would you assume less of Tony?”

“Because-” he begins, but there is no reason, not really, _because I wanted to hate him for not being who I wanted him to be_ he thinks, but has enough self-preservation not to say.

“Because you were punishing him for not _being_ Howard,” Colonel Rhodes echoes his thoughts yet again.

Steve can’t bring himself to argue.

“That’s enough,” Stark says, tone commanding. “Back off. He knows that’s not why I did it, and he’s not the only one who made mistakes here.”

“No, I-” Clint starts, eager to take his portion of the blame for their actions.

“Not you Barton, Jesus, I thought I was the self-obsessed one in this room. _I_ hacked the personal files, and I used some of the things in there to say cruel things myself. I am not actually completely helpless. It’s not like I curled up in a ball and cried myself to sleep every night.”

“You’re saying this has all just been a big misunderstanding?” Ms. Potts questions, staring hard at Stark. Steve deduces that she is trying to see how much is his mask of devil-may-care attitude he uses to insulate himself from the world, and how much is genuine feeling.

“This is more than a misunderstanding,” the Colonel objects.

Steve agrees, whatever Stark may think, there was malice in much of what they did and said and he won’t have it brushed away, won’t allow Stark to believe he is the one at fault any longer. “No. This wasn’t a misunderstanding. We- I... _I_ was no better than the people who used to bully me for being too weak to fight back. Tony couldn’t stop us, and we knew that.” The sentence is out before he realises he is going to use Tony’s first name and something shifts and reconfigures inside him and suddenly, the man standing in front of him looks nothing like Howard, nothing at all. Steve has been trying to force him into a mould not built to contain him, no wonder he was spilling out at the edges, movements and words utterly unpredictable and _wrong_ in a way Steve couldn’t explain even to himself.

“And everything _I_ said-”

He is not at fault. It is the hardest thing Steve has ever done, the thing he is the least worthy to do, but he looks Tony direct in the eye and says gently, “A cornered animal will fight back the hardest.”

Whatever Tony might have answered that with, he doesn’t get a chance as Natasha sweeps in wearing a dress that Steve recognises too well. “This is awesome Stark, thanks,” she smiles, entering the room seemingly oblivious of the tension. “Have you seen this Clint? It’s armour. Shoot me.”

It breaks the moment between them and Steve looks away again in renewed shame.

Finally, Natasha realises that this is not a friendly chat. “What’s wrong?” she demands, “Is it Phil?”

“I- ah...no,” Clit rushes to reassure her. “There was...umm...see, you should have had that dress for the mission you’ve just been on. How was that by the way? Everyone dead?”

Natasha is not to be distracted. “You can read my report later if you’re so interested. Carry on.”

Her voice is almost more dangerous that Ms. Potts’ was a few moments ago. Clint clearly hears it too because he is more hesitant as he says, “Yes well...we...” he stops and changes his pronoun abruptly and Steve wants to scream at him that he doesn’t deserve anyone’s protection any longer, “I thought he was trying to seduce you.”

“Are you trying to tell me, Hawkeye,” Natasha says, crossing the room towards him in a way that makes Steve intensely glad that that deadly focus isn’t trained on him, “that you denied me shoes that turned into knives because you thought they were a come on?”

“...Maybe?”

“Did it never occur to you that giving weaponry to someone is a sure fire way to make sure that _you can’t_ do anything untoward with them?”

“We...I...didn’t actually know...I thought it was a dress, with _stockings_. This is actually not my fault. This is a mistake anyone could have made.”

“My job is to be seduced by people much worse than Stark-”

“Hey!” Tony objects, and Steve admires the man’s bravery, he wouldn’t object to anything Natasha said in that tone.

“-and I _never_ turn down presents.” The words are civil.

From his angle, Steve can’t see how she’s touching Clint but he gathers she’s doing something when he says tightly, “Alright, Tasha alright, you’re, hurting my hand.”

 “Are you going to treat me like a helpless girl who needs you to go through her stuff and decide what she can and can’t handle ever again?” Ms. Potts smirks at the question and Steve makes the tactical note to never, ever cross these women.

“No, no alright,” Clint agrees, “just...owwwww Tasha. Stop it!”

She moves away. “Thank you,” Clint sighs, rubbing the hand she must have been gripping.

“Thank you Stark,” she says again, turning to Tony, “It really is very useful. And beautiful. Maria will be so jealous.”

“It’s...you’re welcome.”

“What did you write in your report Natasha?” Ms. Potts asks, bringing the meeting back on track.

Natasha answers instantly, with no prevarication, which tells Steve all he needs to know about pissed off she is with the pair of them, “Nothing that should have led to this. I admit, I was a little wary, but I understand there were particular circumstances at the time of my observation.”

“Natasha never did anything,” he says quickly.

“It’s true. She didn’t-”

“I had you banned from seeing Coulson.”

“Yes well, you had just found out that I’d hacked into your personal records.”

“Banned? But the cards I sent-”

Clint begins another confession and Tony glares him into silence and says, “He loved them, they were fine.”

“The dress isn’t the only misunderstanding to have happened in my absence is it?” Natasha says, her gaze his angry, but deeper than that, Steve can see that she’s terribly, terribly disappointed. The Avengers is no place for people like Natasha if their leader can’t look even the slightest part beneath the surface.

Still he doesn’t lie, he won’t, “It was the worst though. That was the only time Tony got physically hurt.”

“You _hit_ him! I should have murdered you last night.”

Steve meets Colonel Rhodes angry glare impassively, “Go ahead, it’s nothing less than I deserve.”

“Oh for- stop it Rhodey,” Clint has shifted defensively, presumably to protect Steve from the beating he has more than earned from Colonel Rhodes’ hand, but it is Tony who holds the man back, “You already broke two fingers hitting him last night.” Steve’s eyes drop to the man’s bandaged fingers, something he hadn’t noticed before and he feels a new pang of guilt that he hurt him, however unintentionally, for doing nothing more than protecting his friend, “And you,” Tony points at him with a violent motion, “you never hit me anyway. It was Clint,” Clint’s protective body language drops, apparently he will accept a beating even if he will not tolerate Steve receiving one, but Tony still doesn’t release Colonel Rhodes, simply adds, “and since Barton hits like a girl, it doesn’t count.”

Natasha looks _wounded_ as her eyes flick from Clint to Steve and back again, “How did you turn my report into _this_? I said he was immature, childish, and narcissistic but not...how did you manage this?”

Steve genuinely thinks he’s going to cry from the sheer shame of his actions, right here, in front of everyone. “I don’t-” he starts to explain to Natasha, but he doesn’t have a reason so instead he turns his head and says, “I am so sorry Tony,” with as much sincerity as he can muster. He deserves that at least.

Tony won’t look at _him_ now, screwing his eyes shut, but Steve refuses to feel hurt. He has earned this. Even so, Tony has the decency to try and ease the situation, “All the over emoting in this room is giving me hives. Can we please just go and do something bonding and manly? Or womanly,” he adds as Natasha looks at him, “in the interests of not being stabbed with one of my amazing shoe-knife creations, or being glared to death by Pepper, I am willing to do something womanly.”

“You can’t just-” Steve begins, hating bitterly the fact that Tony himself won’t take him to task as he deserves. He wants Tony to rage and scream at him, to defend himself as he has so far refused to do.

“Actually Rogers, I can.”

“Steve. Call me Steve. Please,” and there might be a pleading note in his voice, but he doesn’t want to be so impersonal to Tony that he is known only by surname.

“Steve,” Tony echoes in agreement, but immediately carries on with his earlier thought, “Yes, yes I can. Don’t worry, I can think of a myriad of ways for you to make this up to me. I want a cupboard full of pork rinds, a unicorn, Angelina Jolie to come with me to the next gala Pepper makes me go to and half a dozen baby penguins.”

The sheer ridiculousness, sheer _Tony-ness_ , of the demands, forces a smile out of Steve, despite the self-loathing which still hasn’t abated, “I’m sure we can work something out.”

“Welcome to the Avengers,” mutters Clint, “drama, angst and now apparently, penguins.”

Steve holds out a hand and Tony, hesitantly, grasps it in a firm handshake, “Welcome to the Avengers,” Steve repeats, a soft vow that Tony is one of theirs, one of his, and that this will never happen again.

 

~Finis

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[PODFIC] Paved With Good Intentions](https://archiveofourown.org/works/709989) by [kerravon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kerravon/pseuds/kerravon), [lilsmartass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilsmartass/pseuds/lilsmartass)




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